


Hell Bent, Heaven Sent

by eloquated, sherlock221Bismymuse



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Afterlife, Angst and Feels, Heaven & Hell, M/M, Mind Palace, Multi, Mycroft Being a Good Brother, Reincarnation, Sherlock Holmes Has Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-16
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2019-11-19 04:45:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 44,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18131132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eloquated/pseuds/eloquated, https://archiveofourown.org/users/sherlock221Bismymuse/pseuds/sherlock221Bismymuse
Summary: Welcome!Everything is...The Holmes brothers had never thought about what came next.  They had one life to make their mark, and when the curtain came down, that would be the end of it.Death had a strange way of putting those assumptions into a very different context.





	1. The mind is its own place and in itself, can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're baaaaaack!
> 
> Well, we never left, but we're back with a new collaboration, and one we're very excited about! 
> 
> Our first chapter title is taken, quite fittingly, from John Milton's 'Paradise Lost'.
> 
>  
> 
>   
> 

**i.**

**⠀⠀⠀⠀Welcome!  
⠀⠀⠀⠀** **Everything is fine.**

Sherlock stared at the cheerful words, painted in annoyingly cheerful colours on a sickeningly bright wall. His hackles rising at this obvious attempt at making things seem happy-happy-lalala.

He looked around and realized that he was sitting on a comfortable sofa in a reasonably large room, and although he could not deduce the sound of any air-conditioning the room was at a comfortable temperature.

Just as he was trying to remember how he got here and what was the latitude and longitude, and whether he had fallen through a rabbit hole and emerged in Australia…  a door opened on one of the walls and a woman peeped out.

She had her hair tumbling around her shoulders in loose curls and a kind smile on her face. The backlight from the window made it seem as though there was a halo around her head.

“Welcome to the Good Place Mycroft! My name is Angela. You can call me Angel for short.”

Sherlock was about to correct her and rather sharply, telling her that _he may have said that he was on the side of angels, but clearly angels were not very clever because he was Obviously NOT Mycroft_ … but something made him hold his tongue.

He just blinked at her, trying to deduce things, but he kept drawing a blank.

Age? Job? Home? Family? Pets? Hobbies?

She was standing there waiting patiently for a minute and then she cleared her throat mildly and gestured at the door.

“Mr. Mycroft Holmes?  Would you care to come in?”

“Where am I?” Sherlock asked as soon as he entered.

“The Good Place of course!” Angela said with a smile.

Sherlock gave her a withering look.

“You know that doesn’t really mean anything right? Like if I ask you what time is it and you say ‘Now’ or something equally _idiopathic_.”

He frowned. “ _Idiomatic_.” He said.

He tried again. “ _Ideological_.”

“Why the _HELP_ can’t I say _IDIOSYNCRATIC_?!”  He almost snarled.

“Oh Mr. Holmes!” Angela gasped. “We can’t say insulting and bad words here. This is the GOOD Place!” she said with emphasis.

Sherlock just stared at her like she had gone crazy.

“Am I dreaming? Have I gone _map_ ? Did I inject **_drums_ **? I mean…” And he stopped.

_Ah. Well, whatever this dream or nightmare was at least the rules were consistent._

“What is this place and why am I here?” He finally asked, clenching his fist on his lap.

Angela beamed at him.  It was chirpy and bright, and he was already sick of the sight of it.

“You are here because you are dead, of course, and you are in the Good Place because of all the hard work you put in while on Earth to keep your Queen and Country safe. You also averted so many wars, got rid of some real evil, but mostly because you scored a squintillion points for saving your younger brother Sherlock and protecting so many people from the harm he would have unleashed on them.”

She shuddered. “That alone would have got you into the Good Place.”

Sherlock just stared at her again, even more convinced that this was a drum-induced hallucination… but he couldn’t remember doing _drugs_ for years now. _The last memory he had was…_

But Angela was not done talking.

He rolled his eyes… and found to his great disgust that he couldn’t do that either! All he managed was to blink rapidly. He gave up.

“Mr. Mycroft Holmes?” Angela was asking. “Are you ready to go to your final destination and meet your soulmate?”

Sherlock raised his eyebrows at her and asked in the coldest voice he could summon, dripping with venom.

“Excuse me?!”

She smiled at him, clearly oblivious to his tone. “Your final destination!” She chirped. “And your soul mate! She is already here and has been waiting for the last hour. Not that time has any meaning here!” She trilled again. “This is eternity.”

“Janet!” She called out and a woman appeared out of nowhere with an invisible chime, startling Sherlock.

She had her back to them and a phone in her hand and was typing away. She finished and then turned and looked up briefly at Angela.

“Yes?” She asked.

 _Anthea?!_ Sherlock was convinced now that this whole thing was some mad dream.

Maybe Mrs. Hudson had put magic mushrooms in their risotto by mistake… some fuzzy memories danced at the edge of his Mind palace.

They were having some kind of celebration at home… Baker Street… there had been an explosion… BOOM…

_What had they been celebrating?? Where were the others??_

“Where is My… younger brother?” he asked.

Anthea answered in a monotone.

“He has been condemned to the depths of The Bad Place for his deeds while on Earth. Drugs, lies, manipulations, being a constant source of worry for you, demanding murders from that lovely D.I at Scotland Yard, and unspeakable rudeness to all he came in contact with.”

Sherlock listened to that litany of bad deeds and was shocked into silence.

He truly had been that bad hadn’t he??! _Then why the HELP was he in this DARN place???_

_And was…oh good heavens, was Mycroft in...?_

He spoke. “But surely the work he did in solving crimes, getting justice must have been worth something?”

“Yes.” It was Angel who answered. “It was worth… let me see… umm… 812 points.”

“What?! What kind of a _non-toxic_ calculation is that?”

 _Darn this censorship_ he thought !! _Huh how come he could think censorship?? Wasn’t that a bad word?? In fact wasn’t ‘bad’ a bad word?_

He went into a spiral inside his brain.

Angela cleared her throat. “Mycroft?”

 _Huh?_ “Yes, what kind of a score is that?!” he exclaimed. “He caught hundreds of criminals and …”

“72 to be exact.” Anthea/Janet said.

“But he did it for the wrong reasons.” Angel continued cheerfully. “For the thrill of the chase. To not be bored. He didn’t do it for justice, for kindness, or because he cared.”

“Caring is not an advantage.” Sherlock said mechanically.

“Oh Mycroft.” Angela said sadly. “We know you used to say that to stop your own heart from aching, protecting yourself from his behaviour. We know you didn’t believe it. Not really. Caring is everything. Love conquers all. Which is why you are here and he is not. Because you cared for him. You loved him.” She paused.

“As a brother of course.” She hastened to add.

Janet was about to speak when Angela interrupted her abruptly,  “Would you care to show Mr. Holmes to his final destination? Surely his soulmate must be waiting for him?”

“Follow me.” Janet said as she led the way.

 

**ii.**

It was Heaven.

 _Or at least some goldfish’s idea of heaven,_ Sherlock thought with a sneer as he followed Janet out of the office building.

 _Hmm…not bad,_ he conceded as they passed through a central square with many fish and chips shops, a cake shop and lots of small cafes. The entire square was thick with the smell of excellent coffee.  Even the weather was perfect, sunlit and warm, and stopping just short of being uncomfortably hot!

“Janet can I get some coffee?” He asked, and in an instant she handed him a cup.

“Black with two sugars.” She said.

“Are you a robot?” Sherlock finally asked her, unable to deduce one way or another.

“No. I am limitless knowledge living in an endless void. I represent myself in human form so that your brain will not self- destruct. After all, humans live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of the infinity,” she said. “H.P Lovecraft wrote that. Brilliant man.”

Sherlock sipped the coffee as they walked, his brain whirring at top speed as he tried to gather clues and make some sense of _what the help_ was going on.

They reached a residential area and he saw to his shock a two story building, with a café on the ground floor and a cheerful awning flapping over it.

‘Speedy’s’ it said.

He went close to the door... and it was 221B Baker Street!

His final destination was 221B Baker Street?!

“Welcome.” Janet said and she opened the door and let him in. “Your soulmate is waiting for you.”

 _Huh,_ he had forgotten about that. _Who the debris could be his soulmate here?! Mrs. Hudson,_ he thought in a sudden panic?! _Surely not!_ He was still battling the rising anxiety when a soft voice called out to him.

“Hi Mycroft!”

“Molly?!” His voice pitching up with relief. He had this sudden impulse to crush her in a hug when he stopped.

_What?! She had called him Mycroft?! Why? Surely she recognized him…_

“I will leave you now.” Janet said in her mechanical sing-song voice. “Enjoy eternity in the company of your soulmate.”

And then she vanished.

Sherlock and Molly stood there, staring at each other, not sure what to say, or how to start...


	2. There are no bargains between lion and men.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Mycroft Holmes finds the place awaiting him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! So we're going to be attempting to put out three updates a week, on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, so make sure to keep an eye out for them!
> 
> And for those who were wondering where Mycroft is? Here's your answer!
> 
>  
> 
> The title is taken from Madeline Miller's, "The Song of Achilles".
> 
> “There are no bargains between lion and men. I will kill you and eat you raw.”

**i.**

**Welcome!  
** **Nothing is fine.**

Mycroft stared at the enigmatic words, painted in a bold hand and a hideous shade of burnt orange on the dingy wall.  It was the only feature in the room, apart from the threadbare, pea-green sofa he was sitting on; the sort with uncomfortable springs that jab at you whenever you shift your weight.

So he tried not to.

He wasn’t even sure how he had gotten here.  The memories skulked at the foggy edges of his mind; people, Sherlock’s goldfish.  The slanted, dusty afternoon light and the way it had come through the window and lingered, blue-black, on his brother’s curls… He’d been distracted...

_ Oh Sherlock… where are you?   _ Mycroft asked himself, and the thought was followed an instant later by a resigned,  _ Please, don’t let this be one of your jokes. _

The air was stiflingly hot, and so dry that it make the back of his throat ache for some kind, any kind, of moisture.  Silently, Mycroft worked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, trying to summon a little saliva; but every breath of the sulfurous air evaporated his efforts of his lips.

“Alright, brother mine… Enough of your games.  I’m not interested.” He addressed the room flatly, sure that his brother would have a camera hidden somewhere to record his reactions.

There were a dozen drugs that could cause memory loss.  That was the only logical explanation for his hazy recollection.  Just a suffocating weight on his chest, and the touch-memory of gasping for breath.

A little like he felt now.  

Suppressing a nauseous twist in his guts, the one that whispered ‘ _ Something is very wrong here _ ’, Mycroft pulled his cuffs straight, and tried to draw a deeper breath, forcing the tight band around his chest to ease for an instant.

He hadn’t been there more than a few moments, though it was hard to be sure, when the narrow door to his left opened.  It was painted the same bland, yellowing shade as the walls, and he’d hardly noticed it was there. The man that leered out at him snickered and clapped his hands together, the slant of his chapped mouth giving his face a jack-o-lantern sneer. 

“Sherlock bloody Holmes!  Well, looks like we got you after all!”  He boasted, and scratched the top of his balding head with filthy, chipped nails.  A thin hail of dandruff flakes landed on the wide collar of his decidedly 70’s jacket, which didn’t do anything for the dingy, ill-fitting brown fabric.  “I was starting to think that, what with your  _ change of heart-! _ ”  

The man fished a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and tapped one into his palm, his fingers already stained nicotine yellow. “Ha!  Like that was ever going to happen, right? Fucking shit outta luck, you are. As if a selfish bastard like you was ever getting into the Good Place.”

Mycroft blinked at the revolting figure, his gaze resting on the pointed, bony protrusions on his forehead.  

Horns.

The man had  _ horns _ .  

And despite all the logical evidence that this was  _ impossible _ , Mycroft was equally certain that they were no Camden shop body modification.

“Got anything to say in your defense?  I was told you barely shut up! Sherlock Holmes, could talk for fucking days, just to listen to his own voice.  Come on, don’t leave me hanging! You know how fucking boring it is down here?”

Mycroft curled his fingers against the edge of the chair, and shook his head.  Whoever this was, they’d obviously made a mistake. And he’d be damned if he gave him any reason to go looking for the real Sherlock.

Mycroft Holmes knew how to game the bureaucracy, he’d spent the whole of his adult life doing it.  The first rule was to keep your mouth shut. And listen.

The cretin snorted a phlegmy laugh, and jabbed his cigarette between his lips, “Strong silent type, huh?  Happens sometimes. People get it into their heads that this is some kinda  _ democracy _ .”  He snorted again, at the ridiculousness of it.  “Like you get any say in the matter! You’re here to reap the rewards of a wicked goddamn life, Holmes.  A whole eternity of torture, just waiting for you.”

“And-- my brother?”  Mycroft choked a little on the words, the thick heat in the air burned his throat, and turned his tongue cracked and clumsy.  There had to be a way he could turn this situation to his advantage. Already his mind was spinning with data, piecing together ideas and discarding them just as quickly.  

Exhaling a cloud of greasy smoke, the demon (oh, that sounded ridiculous.  Such things didn’t exist!) flicked the grey ash onto the carpet, “Aww, does the baby want his big brother?  Sorry, Sugarplum. I thought we were going to get him-- fucking politicians. We almost always do. All great for a laugh, the way they beg and scream, like it’s going to make any difference.  They’re pretty much fucked from the moment they put their name on a ballot. One of our better jobs, it’s all in the small print.”

The cramped sickness in Mycroft’s stomach tightened, forcing sour bile up the back of his throat.  “ _ And _ ?”

“And nothing.  Didn’t get him.  Oh, he’s dead alright, but the sneaky prick just managed to get enough points to qualify for the Good Place.  Eternity in fucking paradise, that’s what he gets. All comfy cozy for the rest of time. I’d say sorry, but--”  He smirked, and gripped Mycroft’s shoulder with a clawed hand, “Heh, we both know I’m not. Better get used to being on your own, Sherlock… We’ve got a real  _ nice _ torture just waiting for you.  Cry if you want. You will eventually, anyway.”

But the only thing Mycroft heard was that Sherlock was safe.  

_ Safe _ .

_ And far from here. _

His heart in his throat, Mycroft pushed himself up to his feet, resisting the urge to recoil from the demon’s hand. 

Beyond the door was Damnation.  Indescribable suffering.

And Mycroft knew, at that moment, that this was no elaborate joke.

“I’m not afraid.”  He stated, and tilted up his chin.  

But the demon only snickered, and dragged him out into the blistering heat, “Heh... You will be.”

 

**ii.**

It was Hell.

There was no other way to describe it, even though it made Mycroft feel a little foolish.  It was such a small and simple word. Pathetic in the face of all the suffering around him.

An eternal torment that spanned on to the edges of the burnt orange horizon; heat mirages that rose from fissured soil.

The strong screamed, a cacophonous din that reverberated in his skull.

It was better than the moaning.  The thin whimpers of despair that made him shudder with mortal terror.

The air was baked hot and dry, and smelled of bitter, smoky brimstone.  It was the image of Damnation that he had imagined as a child, when he was still young enough for his mother to fear for his soul.  

Sherlock had been just a baby then-- sitting on his brother’s lap in their pew, because it was the only place he wouldn’t fuss.  He’d been warm, and heavy in his arms, half asleep to the sound of the minister’s droning voice, with soft curls that tickled under Mycroft’s chin.  

He pushed the thought to the back of his mind. This was no place for missing his little brother.

But Mycroft could make something of this, he told himself.  Those who were still coherent enough…  _ human enough _ … could help him escape.  Whatever they had planned, he wouldn’t break.  Couldn’t break.

He would not be one of those wretched lost.

“Alright, and here we are!  Block 2349, Unit 2479973.6.”  With a wet cough, the demon’s claws tightened on Mycroft’s arm, apparently waiting for him to make a run for it.  But where would he go? 

The killing fields stretched on and on, far beyond what his eyes could see.  The burnt earth touching the sickly horizon. And even knowing it would be hopeless, Mycroft had to smother the urge to flee.  

No.  Forward.  He tilted his chin with what pride he could summon, and stepped through the door.

Almost immediately, he realized his grave mistake.

The walls were papered in rich ivory, and the floor was smooth polished wood.  It was cold-- just enough to make his skin prickle uncomfortably beneath his sleeves.

This room had no doors. No windows.  And yet, it wouldn’t have seemed out of place in his childhood home.  A piece of Musgrave, twisted and settled in a silent corner of the afterlife.  For there was no sound of suffering here. No echo of the screams beyond the walls.

It was no torture of flayed flesh and scorched bone.  

_It was_ _a torment for Sherlock_.

A room where nobody could hear him.

Where he could throw himself against the walls until he shattered himself.

His own voice reverberating back to him.

_ Solitary _ .

_ Trapped. _

No one to hear the hysteric laughter that bubbled up Mycroft’s throat.  That caught on his cracked and bloodied lips, and hooked at the back of his throat.

He could endure this.  Of course he could. 

Sherlock’s Hell was the first seven years of Mycroft’s life.  The gnawing loneliness that had devoured his childhood. 

Sherlock had saved him from that.  

Mycroft sank to the floor and flattened his hands on the smooth wood.  As long as he was here, Sherlock was safe. Sheltered in paradise. And Mycroft could protect him, as he had clearly failed to do in life.

Let them do their worst-- 

_ Sherlock will never see this place. _


	3. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which even death can't entirely keep them apart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Thursday everyone (or whenever you're reading this!) And thank you to everyone who has sent in encouragement, and theories about what is going to happen next! Your wonderful comments are so inspiring, especially on days when the muses are a little less than cooperative! 
> 
> The title is taken from Madeline Miller's 'The Song of Achilles'.
> 
> “I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.”

**i.**

Everything in Heaven was perfect. 

The weather wasn't too hot, or too cold.  The air smelled of fresh flowers, mown grass, and the burnt caramel notes of coffee rising from Sherlock's cup.  

Even the quiet drone of bees seemed more musical than it had when she was alive, and Molly suspected that they weren't the stinging kind, either.  They were probably the lovely, soft, fuzzy sort that perched on the petals of flowers and looked adorable.

Everything was perfect, until you looked a little closer and realized that everything simply... wasn't.

"Mycroft!  Can you believe it, soulmates?  Us?" Molly exclaimed, her hands just a little too tight at her sides, and the corners of her mouth tense around the artificially cheerful words.  If she looked only at Sherlock (and it was Sherlock, there was no mistaking that face) she could almost imagine she was still alive.

As long as she didn't look around, because this place? The world around the replica of 221 Baker Street?  Didn't look anything like London.

The moment Janet vanished with a musical chime, Molly broke the stalemate between her and Sherlock and bolted forward, her body feeling surprisingly solid and real as she hugged him tightly, her fingers anchored in the heavy fabric of his coat.  She was warm in his arms, perched up on her toes with strands of soft hair tickling under his chin. 

Whatever mistakes had been made, at least they weren't alone.

“Molly…” Sherlock started to say, not sure what to ask, and suddenly worried that someone may be listening.

“Don’t worry.” Molly reassured him. “I know who you are.”

_ Oh thank heavens for Molly, _ Sherlock thought and he winced at the idea that apparently this was meant to be Heaven. The Good Place.  His arms tightened around her, grateful for the realness of her against his chest. 

He’d never been much for hugging in life, but exceptions could be made when you were dead.

“And who are you?” Sherlock asked her, wondering if everyone had been mixed up.

“I am still me, and apparently we are soulmates.” Molly pondered. “But given who they think… Who you are, Mycroft.” She said carefully,  “That’s even more confusing.”

Sherlock stared at her, the implications of what she was saying taking shape inside his befuddled brain.

_ Of course! Molly was brilliant. She was right! If they thought he was Mycroft then it made no sense whatsoever that they had Molly brought in here as his soulmate… They didn’t even know each other!  _

_ No wait… of course they did! During the two years that he had been away, they had plenty of time to get to know each other. _

The thought made him feel sick suddenly. He couldn’t imagine why. Some strange things were swirling inside his brain. Memories hidden behind the mists of time.

Molly was still musing, softly, almost to herself. “And what is really interesting is that they seem to think that your final destination for an eternity in Heaven would be 221B Baker Street. Your brother Sherlock’s home.”

As soon as she said that Sherlock felt an almost blinding pain behind his eyes and he doubled up clutching his head.  Like something grinding painfully half into place.

Molly rushed over to help him and managed to get him to lie down.

“Let me get some cold towels to put on your eyes… Shh… Mycroft.”

Five minutes later, feeling a bit better Sherlock told her he was going to enter his Mind Palace. If there were any clues at all as to what had happened, he would find them there. If there was nothing there either, then… well… basically they were doomed.

Just the thought of spending eternity without Mycroft made him feel sick and he still couldn’t puzzle out why in  _ help _ would Mycie’s Heaven be 221B Baker Street??

_ It was a truly baffling mystery, _ he thought as he entered the Mind Palace and started navigating.

 

**ii.**

Even Hell could not erase the brilliant workings of the Holmes mind.  

The four walls of Mycroft’s prison seemed to close around him when he opened his eyes; unrelieved and blank until they met the floor and ceiling.  They created the long, narrow box that the Powers That Be had chosen for his torment. 

After the tortured clamor of voices outside, the Doomed screaming their pain to the uncaring yellow sky, the silence inside his cell was almost welcome.  With a slow smirk, Mycroft tilted his head back against the plain wall, and closed his eyes.

No, this place wasn’t the misery they had intended-- but it wasn’t somewhere he planned to stay for any longer than necessary.  Still, it was  _ infinitely kind _ of them to provide him with a place to think, and plan, and order his thoughts.

Even if they hadn’t intended it to be.

With a sigh, half expecting his breath to fog white in the chilly air, Mycroft mentally laid out the facts as he knew them.  He was dead. Which was both important, and completely unhelpful, as being dead didn’t actually seem to come with any fringe benefits. 

He was in Hell.  Quite literally. In the box that had been intended for his brother.

It was a bare space that reminded him a little of the small ballroom at Musgrave, a hold over relic from the Regency days of balls and parties, and that in more modern times seemed to only collect dust.   _ Musgrave… Home…  _ The words ran through his mind over and over, sparking at the edges of his synapses maddeningly.  There was something important in that, but it eluded him.

The longer he stayed here, the harder it would be to summon the strength to leave.  Mycroft wasn’t used to relying on instinct, and he had no solid evidence to support his theory.  But he had seen the people outside… Broken shells that had once been human. He would not be one of them.

His weakness could put his brother in jeopardy, and that was a risk he could not take.

With another sigh, Mycroft rubbed his hands over his arms and tried to make himself as comfortable as he could on the cold, hard floor.  They could contain his body, but they couldn’t stop him from retreating to the open spaces and long, winding corridors of his Mind Palace.  

 

**iii.**

From childhood, the Holmes brothers had elevated the concept of the Mind Palace from mnemonic to art.  They were vast, with halls and floors and grounds; with endless rooms and ornaments, each one tied to a specific memory.  They were a lifetime in the construction, each new room and wing carefully laid out and mapped along to the others.

Sometimes it almost felt as though they could find the other there.  In the bright, simple rooms they had created when they were small, and still experimentally fashioning their own worlds inside their minds.  Rooms that whispered of a shared history; with the same knotted trees outside the windows, and carpets on the floors, because they had been familiar to them both, once.  

Rooms that threatened to overlap, and which the boys had left to grow dusty with disuse.  Where they had sealed the doors and locked them shut in adulthood, unwilling to give the other a free passage into their thoughts (even if logically both of them knew such a thing was impossible.)

And there were places in their Mind Palaces that weren’t safe to visit.  Things they had locked away, until they’d turned foul and noxious, occasionally seeping up from the dungeons like a miasma.

But none of that explained the door.

The  _ New _ Door.

Mycroft had just passed through a foyer -- styled after the British Embassy in Washington with creamy walls and scrolled embellishments, the floor in a pleasing charcoal-and-cream geometric tile -- when he noticed the door that had not been there before.  

It was unrelieved black, and shiny as a mirror, reflecting the crossways of corridors behind him.  

And the figure approaching from another direction.

In the polished surface, Mycroft could make out the mad curls and the sweep of a long coat, and his heart stuttered to a stop.  Slowly-- because what if he looked, and it was only his imagination? -- Mycroft pivoted on his heel in disbelief.

“Sherlock?”

“Mycroft?” Sherlock whispered, irrationally afraid that ‘they’ would hear him.

He had been navigating the long and winding corridors of his Mind Palace. He had tried to go as far back as he could and move chronologically forward in the hope of obtaining some clues as to what exactly had happened.

He had gone as far back as Musgrave Hall and when he had been about to approach his childhood bedroom door, he had hesitated and stepped away and move to another memory. Some doors were best left closed.

He had wafted through the school years and breezed through the college years, then London, then Baker Street, and slowly it occurred to him that, well, there seemed to be so many more passages than he remembered, branching out in all directions, like a three dimensional fractal design.

He frowned.

_ That was exceedingly odd. He had no recollection of having created these. _

_ Not in this lifetime _ , one part of his brain supplied helpfully.

His frown deepened.

_ What did that even mean? _

He glanced down one passage and saw an unearthly greenish glow. He looked down another and found a campfire burning. A third one had a deep red velvet curtain dropped halfway down it.

He simply could not remember where these had come from and he kept wandering down the main corridor in a slightly distracted way till he finally found himself staring at a large black door, that he was quite certain he had never constructed.

It shone, sleek and smooth like granite except that it seemed to also somehow be translucent.

As he came closer to it, he saw a figure on the other side. A familiar profile, a tall slim man in a suit and his heart went still. The part of his brain that had been flapping with anxiety and worry started to calm down.

This person, he would know what to do! He would know what was going on! He would solve this problem.

He  _ always _ knew how to!

“Mycroft?” He said again in a whisper. “Is that you?”

It was impossible, but Mycroft hadn't been gone long enough to give up hope of seeing his brother again.  In the stillness of the hallway, he blinked slowly, and was more than a little shocked when Sherlock didn't evaporate in front of him.  Instead, he looked as uncertain as Mycroft felt; matched eyes mirroring their indecision for half a second.

"Sherlock!  Thank God!" Mycroft exhaled in a rush, and closed the space between them in three long strides.  He couldn't remember the last time he'd hugged his brother-- probably when they were children, before everything had changed and gone to--

Well, the irony of the statement wasn't lost on him.  

With a ragged shudder of relief, Mycroft pulled Sherlock in close.  One hand smoothed unsteadily over his cheek, and turned his face gently to the sides so he could check for injuries.  "Thank God..." He breathed again, and his heart began to painfully unclench in his chest, "Yes, it's me. Are you alright?" 

Sherlock was swinging wildly between toe-curling relief at seeing Mycroft, utterly baffled that he was inside his Mind Palace, and stunned at the completely unexpected hug.

His brain spiralled into a swirl of deductions.

If Mycroft was inside Sherlock’s Mind Palace and hugging him then did it mean that it was a manifestation of Sherlock wanting Mycroft to hug him, or was he in fact inside Mycroft's Mind Palace? Or were they in each other’s Mind Palaces? In which case how could they….

Hmm, what?

_ Alright? Mycroft was asking him if he was alright? _

Sherlock gave a bark of laughter. 

"Of course I am not alright, brother mine! I am apparently in Heaven but you are not there…"  He bit his tongue.

_ What was he saying?! Wasn’t that bordering on sentiment? Mycroft would cut him down for that… Better to stay logical.  _

Intellect above all.

“I have deduced that there has been some error and they think I am you. Logically, you need to come here and I need to be where you probably are. In fact I should be asking if  _ you _ are ok?!” Sherlock said, shock giving way to sudden anxiety as to what was happening with Mycroft.

“This place is weird, and they said I had a soulmate but it’s  Molly  and that doesn’t make sense.  And then they took me to my ‘final destination’ and it is 221B which makes even less sense because if it is meant to be  _ your _ heaven then why the help would it be  _ my  _ home?”

Sherlock said it all in one go, breathlessly, frantic to give Mycroft all the relevant information in the hope that he would find some solution.

He would. He always did. 

After all, he  _ was _ the smart one.

It was a deluge of information, spilling across Sherlock's lips and muddling in Mycroft's mind.   _ No, I'm not in Heaven. But you are, and safe there.  Understand, brother mine, I need you safe.  _

"Hush, calm.  Take a breath.  I'm right here, and entirely fine. You can see with your own two eyes that I am."  Mycroft had never considered himself an honest man; his job alone had made that impossible.  And this was for his brother's own good. If Sherlock knew the truth, Mycroft sickeningly suspected he would try to do something about it.

To  _ fix it _ .  Even if that meant the risk of their positions being switched. 

Mycroft wouldn't let that happen.

Swallowing hard, his heart thudding against the base of his throat, Mycroft slowly brushed his fingers over his brother's curls, and tried to convince himself that this was real.   _ Our minds have always been more similar than we wanted to acknowledge, but this is madness.  How could he be in my mind? Or am I in his? _

But it couldn't be a fever dream, because Mycroft knew he wouldn't dream the tight, rushed tone in his brother's voice.  "They think my idea of paradise is your mold experiment infested flat?" He forced a laugh and shook his head dismissively, before taking a reluctant step back.

_ Act normal, even if this situation is anything but.  You can't give him reason to worry.  _ _   
_ _ Any more than he already is. _

"Lucky that their mistake is a comfortable one for you."  He added with a poker faced smile, and his voice schooled into something calm and reassuring.  Mycroft wasn't sure why that would be Heaven for him... But he had a suspicion. An uncomfortable suspicion that wriggled under his ribs, guilty and wrong.  

“Sherlock--”

_ Where else would it be?   _ Mycroft’s own house had been a shell, impersonal and cold.  His childhood home was a distant memory. And even Mycroft hadn't wanted to spend eternity at his office!  No. 221B was where Sherlock was. And Sherlock was--

_ Enough!  Don't you have enough pain without creating more for yourself? _

“Mycroft? Say something!” Sherlock was asking impatiently, as though they were running out of time for this encounter. As though some sixth sense was telling him that he needed to go back.

Someone was knocking.  He could hear it. Someone was trying to take him away from here.

“Where are you? If 221B is what they think your Heaven is, then you are...  are you where they think it is my idea of… Mycie?!” He cried out, shocking himself when that name crossed his lips.

Two decades since he had last used it in the outside world but here? Now? When he needed a sanctuary?

That would always be the name he would call.

And there would always be a solution offered. Always.

Mycie would  _ always _ be there for him.

So why was he fading away now? Disappearing.

_ Mycie… _

 

“Lock!”


	4. The path to paradise begins in hell.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the distance is endured, and plans are made.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone, we hope you're having a wonderful week! 
> 
> The chapter title is taken from Dante Alighieri's 'Purgatorio'.
> 
> “Who has guided you, or what has been your  
> lantern, coming forth from the deep night that makes the valley of Hell forever black?  
> Can the laws of the abyss be broken, then? or  
> has some new counsel been adopted in Heaven,  
> that although damned you come to my cliffs?.”

**i.**

Time had very little meaning in a Mind Palace.

It knew what Mycroft knew, or had known; there were no seasons, no time of day, and no way to mark the passing time in his claustrophobic cell.  Just the endless chill that numbed his fingertips, and the blank walls that offered no promise of an easy escape.

Retreating to the familiar corridors of his Mind Palace should have been a relief, but something was very strange.  The layout had once been as familiar as his own mind, which it was-- and now, there were halls and rooms that he had never seen, with architecture and ornaments that he certainly hadn't designed or chosen.

And there had been Sherlock.  No figment of his imagination, but real as life and stubbornly trying to hide his own fear.  

If Mycroft was being honest, exploring the changes in his mind was mostly an excuse to wait for his brother.  And the hope that he would have some answers for him when they met again.

Were these doors Sherlock’s?  And if so... how had that happened?

 

**ii.**

“Are you feeling better now Sh… Mycroft?” Molly asked in her gentle and caring way, as always. He was sleeping with his head on her lap, and she was stroking his hair softly.

The knocking that he had heard was still going on, and a few seconds later, Angel came in through the front door.

“Ooh! Sorry to interrupt you love birds!” She said with a simpering smile. “I wanted to let you know that there will be a dinner party later this evening so that you can get to know the other residents. In the meanwhile, if you need anything, anything at all, just ask Janet.” And she threw a flying kiss at them, twirled around, and left.

Sherlock took off his shoe and threw it at the door as it shut behind her. Molly gasped in horror.

“Sherlock!”

“What?” He glared back at her, “She was lowering the IQ of the entire street. Wittering and laughing and talking non- _ toxic _ … darn it… rubbish… about parties.”

“Aha!” He sat up and looked at Molly triumphantly. “See? How come I can say ‘rubbish’? Isn’t that a bad word?? Isn’t ‘bad’ a bad word? How come I can say them both, but I can’t say idio- _ matic _ ? Idio- _ pathic _ ?! Idio- _ syncratic! _ ”

Molly was in fits of giggles by now.

“Oh Sherlock! What is wrong with you?  Bad and rubbish are also descriptive words. The others that you are trying to say are only insults! But forget her and all the others-- what did you see in your Mind Palace? Was there anything useful?”

_ As always, despite her giggles and softness, Molly asked the most sensible questions, _ Sherlock thought.

Was there anything useful? Hmm. He wasn’t really sure.

“I don’t know Molly. It was odd actually. I saw My… my brother there.”

“And is that unusual?” Molly asked with a frown.

“No, actually it isn’t. I see him there very often. He helps me solve problems and… and whenever I… Never mind all that.” Sherlock brushed that sentence away. “What was unusual this time was that it felt… as though I was inside  _ his _ Mind Palace at the same time. As though there was some kind of connection… a portal. There was a black door. And we met through it, and spoke to each other, and he said… He touched me and asked if I was ok. He never touches me. He hasn’t touched me in decades… And he hugged me.” Sherlock fell silent, reliving that memory, and how good it had felt.

Molly was speaking slowly, thoughtfully. “So maybe that means you  want your brother to hug you so that is what you saw? Or do you think you really did see him inside his own Mind Palace through a connection? This is the afterlife so maybe that is how things work here? How can we test that hypothesis?”

Sherlock was looking away in the distance, trying not to think of what she had just said.

_ He  _ _ wanted _ _ Mycroft to hug him _ ?

Now that she had said it, he realized it was true. Mycroft used to hug him all the time as a kid. He remembered that feeling of being safe in his arms, feeling cherished. Feeling loved. Those arms would protect him from anything the world wanted to throw at him.

His refuge. His Mycie.

He had missed Mycroft with a physical ache when he had left for college. He had been mad at him, angry with him, and had turned his back on him.

And they had never hugged since.

But even if all that were true… this hug had felt like something more than just a figment of his own imagination. Somehow he knew with a certainty that he had seen the Mind Palace of his brother.

“Molly.” Sherlock said. “It was him. I saw him. He was happy to see me, but he wasn’t happy per se. If I am here in this so called Good Place, then logically he must be in the Bad Place. And if I hate it here, can you imagine what he must be going through over there? We need to find him. I need to find him. I  have to find him! Will you help me?”

“Of course Sherlock! Always.” Molly said with a smile. “Maybe you should wait till after this dinner party is done so that you can have uninterrupted time to search for him?”

Sherlock nodded. That made sense.

The game was on.

 

**iii.**

Mycroft wanted to scream.

To beat on the walls of his prison until his hands bloodied and knuckles split.  He had no way to know how long he’d been trapped here.

Wandering the new corridors of his Mind Palace and searching… searching… Listening and  _ waiting _ for some sign from his brother.  Some reassurance that he was alright.  

There were things in the Mind Palace he didn’t need anymore; train schedules and phone numbers, the flotsam of life, and the memory of the work he’d been doing the morning before his death.  Career goals didn’t seem to matter much when you were already dead. Endless things to tidy away.

Too many hours in the endless days, featureless and void in Hell.  

Perhaps the Powers That Be had intended the claustrophobic walls to undo Sherlock; but the not-knowing, the doubt and helplessness, left their own legacy.

For a while, Mycroft attempted to sleep, stretched on the cold floor, and his head pillowed on his arms.  A momentary reprieve that came with nightmares and half finished, flickering images behind his eyelids. His fears come to haunt him in technicolour.

Mycroft didn’t try to sleep again after that.

It could have been a day.  And it could have been a decade.  Mycroft didn’t know-- but one day... 

Night…?

Did it matter…?

His solitude was broken by a strangely musical chime.  Turning sharply on his heel, his back pressed against the wall where he had been trying to peel away the eggshell coloured paper, Mycroft eyed the stranger warily.

Well, she wasn’t a stranger.  Not really. Not  _ entirely _ .  But Anthea, he knew, didn’t have ‘invading Hell’ in her skillset.  

Swallowing hard, his throat sticking and parched, Mycroft squared his shoulders and faced the woman.  She looked just as he remembered, tall and slim with dark hair and a withering expression.  _ But it can’t be her.  No phone. And Anthea would never be caught dead wearing that much leather. _

“Who are you, and what do you want?  He asked curtly, and folded his hands tightly against the small of his back.  Hell or not, he was still Mycroft Holmes, and these demons would never be allowed to see him sweat.

“I’m here to help you.”

“You must forgive me if I seem doubtful of that.”

The not-Anthea shrugged faintly, one shoulder lifted slightly before it fell back into place.  “It’s your choice if you don’t want to accept it.” She pointed out, and loosely crossed her arms.  After all she’d gone through to find him… Masquerading as one of the Bad Place Janets, even! Typical!

Mycroft considered, the corners of his mouth pressed thin and tight.  He didn’t have many other options, it was true. He couldn’t escape on his own, and it was only a matter of time before madness claimed him.   _ And what good would I be, then? _

“What do you expect me to do?”

“My powers are limited here.  We’ll pretend I’m escorting your to a new department.”  Not-Anthea paused, and flicked a few strands of backcombed hair from her eyes with a doubtful expression, “Once we reach the catacombs, you’re going to have to find your way through alone.”

“Why?”

“It’s a failsafe, to stop people from doing what you’re attempting to do.  I can’t enter them.” 

“Why are you offering to help me?”  

Anthea’s dark gaze panned over his body, scanning and searching.  It made him feel exposed, and instinctively, Mycroft pressed back against the wall more securely.

“Because you’re not Sherlock Holmes.  Something has gone wrong, and I want to know why.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can the Powers That Be contain the Holmes brothers forever? We'd love to hear what you think!


	5. Can it be a sin to know? Can it be death?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the Holmeses go looking for answers. 
> 
> (And find more questions).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title is from John Milton's 'Paradise Lost'.
> 
> Knowledge forbidden?  
> Suspicious, reasonless. Why should their Lord  
> Envy them that? Can it be a sin to know?  
> Can it be death?

**iv.**

Finally the dreary dinner party was over, and Sherlock flung himself down on the bed as soon as they got back.

“I will throttle those ugh…  _ idiomatic  _ people… if I have to go through one more such occasion that is designed purely to destroy brain cells, and serve no purpose beyond wittering away and wasting one’s precious time, when one could be doing experiments instead,” he snarled.

Molly stretched and yawned.

“Yes, it was rather dull, until you started your deductions of course.” She pointed out after a beat.

“Yeah, well, nothing that you couldn’t observe either.”

“Yes, true, but one doesn’t have to say  _ everything _ one observes.” Molly sighed, long years of experience with Sherlock on Earth giving her the patience to deal with such tantrums. Least said soonest mended. “Let me get us some coffee and then you can plan to visit the Mind Palace portal again.”

Sherlock was still cranky and just called out, “Janet! Coffee.”

Janet appeared with two cups of coffee in her hands.  “Your brother would have said ‘please.’” She reproached, and it sounded odd in her cheerful voice.

Sherlock just stared at her.  _ Yes, that was very true but _ ...

“What do you know about my brother?” He asked her abruptly, and propped himself up a little on the end of the bed.

Then he remembered that in fact she thought he was Mycroft. 

So then why was she...

“Did you meet Mycroft?! Janet! Where is he? Take me to him! Now!”

Janet looked at him with her polite half smile.

“I cannot transport the residents. That is not part of my function in this form. I can give you the information you need. The catacombs from the Bad Place lead onto the Event Horizon of Everlasting Sand. That is also where the Central River from the Good Place flows out. However that will not be easy and you must do it with great care. If found, you will be taken away to the Eternal Waiting Room Centre for Rehabilitation and Cure, and it is indeed as bad as it sounds. I will help your brother escape  three days from now,  so that is when you should also plan to be gone  If your intent is to leave.”

She stopped and smiled.

Sherlock and Molly were just staring at her, open mouthed at this information.

Molly was the first to recover. “Why are you helping his brother to escape?”

“Because a mistake has been made. It is a data error. If not corrected now it will corrupt the entire programme.”

Sherlock spoke, as the implications of what Janet was saying were getting clearer.  His mind searched for patterns, piecing together the image from the fragments they’d managed to puzzle out.

“So you have met Mycroft? The  _ Real _ Mycroft? And he’s in The Bad Place?!”

“That is entirely right!” Janet said cheerfully.

“And even if I do meet him, unless we exchange places, won’t everyone in charge find out?”

“That is also right!” 

“So eventually I need to go to the Bad Place instead of him.”

“That is right again!” 

Sherlock took a deep breath, steadying.

Molly asked, “Janet, what happens in the Bad Place?”

“You are trapped inside your worst memories, and then tortured physically and emotionally. For unending expanses of time. Till you wish you were dead. Then you remember that you are. It is a place especially designed for torment. For agony, suffering, torture, pain, anguish, misery, distress, affliction, trauma and wretchedness.”

Molly paled as she heard all this, and clutched Sherlock’s hand in distress. He was staring at Janet in disbelief. This did not sound like a game anymore.

This was war.

He was going to find Mycroft if it was the last thing he did.

“Oh Sherlock! Why don’t you try meeting him in the Mind Palace first? I’m sure he will be able to help come up with a plan!” Molly whispered, as though speaking out loud would fracture some reality.

“Thank you Janet.” Sherlock said, and with a chime she disappeared. 

Back to the endless void.

Molly sat and kept watch as Sherlock closed his eyes, steepled his fingers, and went inside his Mind Palace.

He was impatient today. He HAD to find Mycroft. He was feeling more and more distressed at the idea that while he had been here, grumbling about minor annoyances, Mycroft was in the Bad Place suffering tortures and torment, and that too on his behalf.

_ I am coming for you Brother Mine! _ He thought fiercely,  _ don’t worry. _

Sherlock sped through the passages, searching for any sign of the black portal. He saw so many new passages that would have normally intrigued him enough to make him stop and explore, but not today. Today he was flying on wings of fire. He had to find Mycie.

He felt a flare of fury erupt inside him. 

Mycie was suffering somewhere because of a  _ data error _ ?!

_ Was this the Eternal Afterlife, or a pool of temps at a local office?! _

He darted down the next promising corridor and yes! He had found the door. But today it seemed more like a granite monolith, sleek and smooth and huge. Like the entrance to a Pharaoh’s tomb.

He could not see beyond it, so he settled down to wait.

_ Come on Mycie! Come soon. I am waiting for you Brother Mine. _

 

**v.**

Three days.  

Not for the first time, Mycroft wished there was some way to tell time in the featureless cell he’d been trapped in. A clock on the wall certainly wouldn’t have gone amiss!   _ Of course, they might have expected that Sherlock would take it apart, and use it to escape. _

It’s what he would have done, and the idea made him smile.

However, it didn’t solve the problem of the time.  

So far, it hadn’t seemed like food was a necessity; but Mycroft knew he still needed to be rested and alert when he left this place.  Otherwise he’d be little more than a moving target for the demons on the other side. 

He hadn’t asked Not-Anthea what the consequences of a failed escape would be… It wasn’t worth considering.  He had to escape, there were no other options, and dwelling on failure would only turn it into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

With no better ideas forthcoming, Mycroft ventured back into his Mind Palace in search of something to help him mark the time.

In just a short while, the neat, orderly lines of his Palace had been infected with new, irrational corridors and a profusion of doors that he had never seen before.   Directionless, he moved passed a potted palm (that he didn’t recognize, and which wouldn’t have looked out of place in a 1970’s living room), and three perfectly matched doors, right down to the odd blue handles, and scuffs on the lower corner.

_ It didn’t make any sense!   _ This was his creation, he should be in control of it.  And yet, there was the place where the sheer black door had been-- only now, it looked entirely different!  

Architecture with a vicious, mercurial sense of humour.

Only it wasn’t the door that truly caught his attention, but the young man leaning against it.

With a jolt behind his ribs, sharp and shocked, Mycroft ran the last few steps and sank to a knee in front of his brother.  “Lock! What are you doing here? Are you alright?”

What if there had been some punishment for their conversation before? Some reason they weren’t supposed to be here-- and perhaps why Sherlock had been so suddenly snatched away before?  

“Mycie!” Sherlock exclaimed as he scrambled up to his feet.

He placed his hand against the door and found that it wasn’t a barrier anymore. Aha! So when Mycie appeared in the same spot in his own Mind Palace that is when the portal opened.

“Are you ok Mycie?!” Sherlock asked, frantically looking at his brother for signs of torture or trauma.

He almost put his hand out to touch him but withdrew it at the last minute. 

They didn’t do this. They didn’t touch. They didn’t show emotions. Luckily he could not see any obvious signs of physical torture… but with someone like Mycroft, who was used to so much control and so many aesthetic pleasures, the lack of both would be severe mental torture. Sherlock’s stomach roiled at the idea of Mycroft suffering.

He was in turmoil.

_ How could he persuade Mycroft to switch places? _

When he saw the look on his brother’s face—the joy on seeing his Lock-- he knew with a certainty that Mycroft was not going to allow it.

Sherlock was going to have to find a less direct way to negotiate. He needed a plan.

“I’m fine, I swear.  I was more worried about you, after you vanished like that!  God, Lock, I had no idea what was happening!”

Mycroft was holding out his hand. 

_ Clearly the afterlife had dissolved some of the barriers they had put up between them in real life. _

Sherlock reached out and held his hand, and was astonished to find the sense of absolute rightness that instantly coursed through his entire Mind Palace. It seemed to throb and pulsate -- much like a heart that had been shocked into rhythm after having been frozen for a very long time.

“Mycroft? I don’t understand what is going on. How are we able to meet? Why does the portal door keep changing? What are all these new corridors and passages here that I have never created?”

Some of Mycroft’s razor edged fear ebbed when Sherlock took his hand.  It wasn’t logical-- they both knew that something was wrong, and that either of them could, apparently, disappear at any moment.  They could hold onto one another as tightly as they dared, and it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.

Still, he felt better with the warm, violin-calloused fingers clutching his.

Once upon a time, it hadn’t even been strange for them.  Sherlock had held his hand to cross streets, and to keep from getting lost (which had never frightened him, but after the first time?  Had terrified Mycroft). 

He’d held his hand to compare their fingers, lining up the matched phalanges and comparing the distal… proximal… metacarpal… With all the intensity of a palmist trying to divine his future in the lines and creases.  

But they’d been children then, and Sherlock’s hand didn’t fit the same way in his anymore.  The hollow between their palms felt like an intimate space, flesh-warm and clammy with nerves.

Mycroft swallowed hard and squeezed his fingers reassuringly; unsure which of them needed the comfort more.  

“I’m not certain, Lock…”  And when had their living animosity given way to childhood nicknames?  He couldn’t pinpoint that moment, either. “This doesn’t look entirely like my Mind Palace.  I suppose that means the unfamiliar parts are from your mind?” 

Which sounded impossible, but he didn’t have any better theories!

“We’re probably not going to find any answers standing  _ here _ , though.”  Mycroft added with a pinched nod towards the door.  Formerly glossy and mirror black, and now sandstone pale, and radiating a subtle heat.  Doors, Mycroft was entirely sure (and it was nice to be sure about something) weren’t supposed to do any of that.

Trusting that Sherlock wanted answers as insistently as he did, Mycroft started down one of the unfamiliar hallways.

Most of the doors were relatively nondescript.  White, or near-white, they marched down the walls on either side, and were occasionally interrupted by a vase on a pedestal, or a bright, hanging tapestry.  

Until they reached the end of the passage, and the door at the end was very different indeed.

The pale blue-green, like Sherlock’s eyes but darker, was luminous.  Almost seeming to give off a light of its own. For a long moment they stood before it, frozen in shared indecision.  

Opening it would be a leap of faith into their own minds.

Minds that were currently not doing anything as expected.  Minds that were rejecting their status quo.

“This isn’t my door.”  Sherlock confirmed under his breath.

“Nor mine.”

“Then how could it be in  _ our _ Mind Palace?”

Mycroft had no answer for that.

The eerie right reflected back on their faces, and blurred the lines between their colouring.  Everything washed in the same shades of turquoise and aquamarine. “We may as well start here. It seems as good a place as any.”  Mycroft admitted resignedly, voicing the thought they’d both been thinking. 

His heart in his throat, Mycroft reached out with his free hand-- and tried to ignore the damp cold that seemed to cling to the brass door handle. 

“Look, Mycie!  That’s you… And, that’s... Oh, that’s me… This is  _ us _ .  But where are we?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... And what's behind mystery door number one...?


	6. Eternal, and eternal I shall endure.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which opening a door can lead to unexpected things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! Since chapters 6 and 7 go together, we're going to be posting them both today! (Because really, who doesn't want bonus Holmescest to brighten up their week?)
> 
> The title comes from Dante Alighieri.

  **i.**

"I don't know how you've done it, brother mine, but it seems as though you're going to get your way after all.  Our crossing on the Adriatic has been cancelled, and her passengers transferred to the Titanic." With a resigned expression, and a huff that was just a bit too tight to be laughter, Mycroft held up the note with their change of itinerary, the White Star Line insignia bold on the front of the envelope.

With a squeak of abused violin strings, Sherlock looked up in surprise.  His expression was alight and excited, sharing none of his brother's trepidation.  In less than three weeks, they would be leaving the London gossip behind, and starting their new lives in New York.  No more speculation and sideways glances from the nosy hoi polloi, or hastily silenced whispers from their own elevated rank-- wondering if the Holmes boys were just a little too close.  

Too devoted to one another.

As if their crude, simian brains could ever comprehend them.

Hanging his hat on the hook by the door, Mycroft toyed with the edge of the envelope, tapping it against his knuckles restlessly.  For all his brother's curiousity about the freshly minted marvel of the engineering world, Mycroft was wary. Could something so new and untested be as safe as they claimed?  

_ Well _ , he reminded himself,  _ it's far too late to have doubts now. _  Most of their worldly goods had been sold to finance their new life, to see them established in America.  And on April 10th, they would leave London for Southampton. It would be fine. 

“It is going to be amazing Mycroft!” Sherlock exclaimed, unable to suppress his excitement.  He played a quick foxtrot on the violin, fingers sliding on the strings, before he went over and caught hold of his brother… his lover… And twirled with him round and round the room till they finally had to stop, laughing and panting, Mycroft shaking his head at him in despair.

“Imagine Mycie!” Sherlock was saying, arms flung out in abandon. "Once we get to the other shore, we can be together and we can dance every day, and we can be together every night… And no one will know any better.”

Mycroft had to bite his tongue to stop himself from reminding Sherlock that even if people didn’t think they were brothers, it still wasn’t safe to be two men to be in a relationship. He had said this to Sherlock earlier, often enough, but eventually the situation here in England had become untenable. And this move seemed as good a chance as any other.  

A fresh start, a whole new life.

Sherlock sank to the floor with a flourish and rested his head in Mycroft's lap, watching his rueful smile from this new angle.  "It will be wonderful, a proper adventure. And then a new life in America-- together. After a few days of seasickness for you!"

He looked up and grinned. “Poor Mycie!”

Mycroft stopped running his fingers through his wild curls just to give him a playful box around the ears. “And more so, since our accommodations will be in Second Class, instead of First.  Of course, Second Class on the Titanic is probably still more comfortable than the First on any other ship. Not that I think you'll mind escaping all the social drudgery. You won't miss being stuffed into a starched collar, and expected to behave?"

“Oh good heavens, no! I would suffocate in the first class with all the manners and obligations and unbearable things. I am happier with the working classes. They will have more things to share about what is going on in America. I may make some contacts who can help us settle in.” Sherlock said, with all the confidence of youth. “Do you know that 20 horses were needed to transport the main anchor? And there will be 1000 bottles of wine on board?  Maybe I will sneak some into our cabin, and we can have a celebration of our own!” Sherlock laughed, and winked.

Mycroft shook his head, and leaned over to brush a kiss across his brother's forehead, chuckling under his breath, "You'll be in your element, I'm certain.  And our whole future ahead of us.”

 

**ii.**

So it was that the day dawned, bright and early on 10 April, 1912.  The Holmes brothers found themselves at Southampton Port, the rest of their worldly belongings packed beside them.  The general air of excitement seeping into their blood and the possibility of a free and remarkable future seemed to rise in front of their very eyes in gleaming black steel.

“Sherlock, stay close!” Mycroft cautioned, distracted, as they stepped out of the tightly packed car and onto the docks.  It was an unseasonably warm day for the spring, and the platform was a crush of people; waving up at their friends and family as they leaned over the decks high above.  They chivvied along children, and juggled their piles of cases and bags, their voices raised over the deafening human din. “If I lose you in this, I doubt I’ll be able to find you again before we arrive in New York!”

It was beautiful.  

Beyond the wooden rails of the dock, the sleek, black side of the grand ship rose up sheer and straight-- a marvel of modern engineering, defying Mother Nature herself with claims of invulnerability.   _ Britannia rules the waves, indeed,  _ Mycroft thought to himself as they fished their own bags from the roof of the taxi.  It was impossible to believe that anything so massive could float… And yet, here they were.  

After months of planning, they were finally leaving England.  Their new life awaited. 

Arm in arm to keep from being separated in the packed crowd, the brothers made their way up the long, angled gangplank that lead to the ship.  Mycroft made a note not to look over the edge at the greenish brown water, his heart beating hard against his breast. 

Sherlock, veteran of a lifetime of pirate stories and dreams of the high seas, had no such hesitancy!

The ship was bright and clean, the neat carpet never worn and the walls still smelled faintly of  fresh white paint. There were endless miles of rooms and corridors, winding through the belly of the ship like a labyrinth, before exiting out onto the blindingly sunlit decks.  And all around them, excited people giggled and gossiped against the backdrop of shouted  _ goodbyes, _ and  _ we’ll miss you!   _

“Oh Mycie.” Sherlock breathed in his ear as the ship’s siren blew and they felt the first tug of the mammoth vessel, the thrum of that enormous engine rumbling below them, sending a tremor through all passengers on deck. 

“This is it Mycie! We are going to sail the high seas, and we are going to find our own treasure -- a life together, just you and me!”

And then that scamp sneaked in a quick kiss on his Mycie’s lips, and almost danced on the spot for joy.

_ It was happening! It was real! _

All those years of hiding their longing and desire; the guilt, the shame, the pain of separation, then the gossip, the impossibility of staying apart, and then the months of planning, all leading them to this.

The Titanic.

Their own Noah’s Ark that was going to save them, the two of them, against the world.

Sherlock slipped his hand into Mycroft’s, speechless with excitement now.

Mycroft looked at the beloved face next to his, the joy radiating from it and felt his anxious heart settle. If this was going to make Sherlock so happy? It was worth it. Always.  

He couldn't bring himself to scold Sherlock for his stolen kisses; not when his hand was warm and tight in his own.  "A few more days, dearest, and we'll be free." He agreed, and pitched his voice quiet as they stood together at the railing.  This was it. No turning back, or changing their minds; there was only the open ocean ahead of them, and the future they were determined to make for themselves.     
  
And yet, for all that hope, there was a touch of bittersweet as they watched the shores of their home grow small and smaller in the distance, before it vanished beyond the horizon.  They weren't the only ones, and when the speck had been swallowed up by the endless blue water, Mycroft squeezed his brother's hand and pulled him close against his side. 

_ No regrets.  I'd follow you to the end of the world. _


	7. All hope abandon, ye who enter here.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which some things are inevitable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And part two!
> 
> The chapter title is also from Dante Alighieri.
> 
> Eternal, and eternal I shall endure.  
> All hope abandon, ye who enter here.

**iii.**   
  
The ship was a marvel, and for four days the Holmes brothers walked the decks and took in the best of the cold sea air.  Aboard, the conversation was light and hopeful-- and often it seemed like half of their class was leaving for America to start their new lives, as well.  There was a sense of promise in the air, and excitement for the adventure ahead of them all. New York, and a fresh chance.   
  
Through the porthole in their cabin, Mycroft watched the sun sinking low over the calm water, the sky darkening beyond sunset, and beginning to sparkle with the first evening stars.  

Technically the bunk wasn't wide enough for two people, but they were both thin and had somehow made it work for the last several days.  With lazy hands, he combed through his brother's hair, letting the dark curls slide between his fingers. "A few more days, brother mine."  He hummed, sleepy and content, “... We'll have to dress and go up to dinner in a moment. But I'm rather comfortable here."

Sherlock propped himself up on one elbow and looked at Mycroft, heat in his eyes and a teasing smile curving his lips.

“You need to undress before you dress don’t you, Mycie? Maybe you should do that, and then we can get more ‘comfortable.”

He ducked his head and gave Mycroft a surprisingly soft kiss.

“I love you so much, My. My sweet My. Thank you for doing this! We are going to be so happy together. Just you and me. We will build a cabin in the woods, and I will play my violin while you cook. And we will read together, and go to sleep together, and wake up together. We will not be apart for a single minute.”

It was an impossible dream, and Mycroft knew the reality would have boredom and squabbling, if they had only one another to test their minds on.  But he didn't mention that, because it didn't matter. If Sherlock wanted to throw off society and live in the woods, Mycroft would make it happen-- just as he would find them a place in the city when his brother was tired of nature.  

That was, after all, the point of this new life.  And it was a beautiful dream.

Sherlock deepened the kiss and they spent a pleasant few minutes tasting the love from each other’s lips.

Finally Mycroft moved them apart, and his heart was filled to overflowing at the sight of Sherlock, his beloved Sherlock, with swollen lips, high colour on his cheeks.  In the half light, his dancing eyes were the clearest blue-green; the same bright shade Mycroft had loved since childhood, alight with joy.

“Mine.” Sherlock said softly as he touched their foreheads together. “Come, let's go and get dinner before they close the kitchens! We wanted to see the constellations at 11 tonight, remember?"

They’d been out every night, mapping out the constellations and watching them shift in the heavens as the ship sailed westward.  The stars over London were not the same stars as New York, and they could measure how far they'd traveled by the change in degrees.  "You make it sound as though I'd managed to forget!" Mycroft chuckled against Sherlock's mouth when he pulled him in. He'd recently grown out his beard, and the soft, tidy bristles rasped against Sherlock's skin when he nuzzled a kiss against the warm side of his neck teasingly.

He shouldn't know this, neither of them should.  His brother's body should be a mystery; not one they'd spent the last two years unraveling.  He shouldn't have fingerprint bruises hidden beneath his clothes, where Sherlock had gripped him too hard.  They shouldn't crave this, getting lost in one another; or know how it felt to wake with his brother's heat trapped under the blankets, bare limbs tangled decadently together. 

' _ Shouldn't _ ' had been left a thousand miles to the East.

Mycroft smirked against his neck, and reluctantly untangled himself from their narrow bunk.  "But of course, you're right. We don't want to miss the second seating for dinner. I'd hate for you to try and deduce the stars with your stomach grumbling."  His auburn hair was rumpled and soft, curling at the edges, as he reached for his waistcoat which had been draped over the top bunk. It made him look younger, with his shirt sleeves pushed back to bare pale skin, and a wealth of freckles. 

"You look positively debauched, Lock..."  He quipped over his shoulder, "Don't forget to fix your hair. It rather looks like you've been in bed all afternoon."

“Hmm.” Sherlock hummed, curled up like a cat, and rubbing his face into the warmth left behind by Mycroft on the thin pillow. “Tonight I would rather observe the constellations of freckles on your back. And then stay in bed and never leave. How does that sound to you?”

Then he grinned at Mycroft, knowing that despite the two years since they had first touched, and fallen in love -- or rather, had allowed themselves to express and admit the love that had been between them for so long -- his older brother still had pangs of guilt, and still tended to indulge in self-loathing.

Sherlock had taken it upon himself to reduce that burden of guilt by reminding Mycroft on every possible occasion that he could, just how  _ much _ he loved him, just how  _ fiercely _ he wanted him, and just how  _ perfect _ he thought he was.

When he wasn’t being an utter pain and troubling him of course. After all he still  _ was  _ his older brother, and some things would never change!

Mycroft was still swiftly and methodically getting dressed, after rolling his eyes at him, so Sherlock finally, reluctantly, left the bunk to start getting ready.

_ Tonight, _ Sherlock decided as he licked his hand and tried to use it to settle down some of the wildest curls sticking out, while looking at himself in the tiniest mirror on this planet.  

_ Tonight, upon the midnight hour, I am going to propose to him, _ he thought as he patted the rings in his jacket pocket. He had managed to buy them the week before they left.

Tonight, after Mycroft had finished showing him Perseus and Andromeda, and all the rather brutal love stories that inspired these names, he was going to ask him to find them a constellation in their own names.

Their new names. So that when they had their new life, they could look up at the night sky and know that the universe had wanted this too.

 

**iv.**

For all the airs and graces of the rank they’d been born into, the Holmes brothers had found an unexpectedly comfortable place amongst the academics, tourists, and middle class families aboard the ship.  Their conversations were lively and hopeful, without the backbiting social climbing the boys had grown up with. People who had worked hard to be here, and were thoroughly enjoying all their voyage had to offer. 

It was the stillest of nights as they finally left the dining room, later than expected-- but the conversation had been stimulating, the air outside was cold, and they’d allowed themselves to be talked into a glass of port before bidding the other guests their goodnights.

The ocean before them was still and reflective as glass, stretching out into the infinite, until it met the glittering vault of stars at the horizon.  It had been rougher that afternoon, but the wind had died down before dinner, and left only the bracing, bitter cold behind.

There was no moon, no breeze; only the sounds of humanity from the First Class accomodations, and the constant thrum of the massive engines underfoot.  Propelling them ever forward, on towards New York.

“Do you see there, dearest?  Just at the edge of the horizon?”  Mycroft hummed and pointed to the long string of glittering stars just beginning to rise over the ocean, “That would be Hydra, I’m quite certain.  The sea serpent, rather fitting, don’t you think? In a few weeks, it will fall below the horizon, and only be visible from South America.”

Out here in the dark, there was nobody to notice the way Mycroft’s arm was tight around his brother’s waist.  And if they did? They’d only see two men trying to defy the cold for a little longer. Nothing strange about that.  

From the port side, they could only feel the sudden strain of the ship below them, and watch as the impossible weight of the steel hull began to angle through the water.  A slow turn, and too slow to avoid the translucent mass of ice ahead of them.

They couldn’t see the ice, or hear the voices of the lookouts above; but the vibrations of the engines up through the steel of the ship changed.  Deepened. 52,000 tonnes of man’s design trying to turn sharply.

“Mycroft what’s-”

Whatever he had been about to say, Sherlock’s voice was cut off with the most terrible sound.  It was a metallic grind, and the shriek of ice on steel that made the entire vessel shudder for an instant.  

Glancing back over his shoulder, Mycroft tightened his arm around his brother, his other hand gripping the railing for balance.  “I think we struck something.” He said quietly when the noise had faded, his breath warm against the back of his brother’s neck.

They’d seen ice that afternoon; small, floating islands bobbing about on the blue surface.  Nothing to worry about, and certainly nothing that could hurt the solid steel mass of the ship.  And yet, Mycroft’s stomach clenched uncomfortably. 

_ Unsinkable,  _ they’d said.   _ A modern marvel of design and engineering _ .  

“I’m certain it’s nothing to worry about, Lock.  More sound than fury.”

Of all the times to be wrong, Mycroft had chosen the worst one, Sherlock thought fleetingly as he remembered that there were 2223 people on board and only 20 lifeboats. Each of which had a capacity of 65 people. 

Which meant that 923 people would have to survive on their own.

_ Not that it should come to that, of course _ , Sherlock thought with a chill as he looked at the cold water far below the railing.  White chunks of ice littered the surface, and at this time of year, it couldn't be more than a degree above freezing.  But surely it had sounded more ominous than it was! The ship was state of the art, intended to stay afloat, whatever it might encounter.

Watertight doors.  Bulkheads that ran vertically through the ship, creating walls that would keep the seawater contained.  Designed and redesigned by the masters of their trade, it was meant to endure. 

Mankind's mastery over the waves that were being churned around them as the ship slowed to a terrible, grinding stop.

From their port side position, Mycroft and Sherlock could see the confused and curious passengers peeking out from the First Class salon, wondering what had happened.  And in ones and twos, they ventured out on deck; a few children up late were kicking around fragments of ice that had sheared away from the larger whole. 

Everything felt fine.  Just a strange bit of excitement, and nothing to worry about, the crew insisted.  

Right until it moment it didn't.

Before their very eyes the ship started to lurch and dip.  Slow at first, a starboard list that canted the decks unnervingly underfoot.  His arm tight around his brother's waist, Mycroft watched as several of the crew began handing out the heavy, white lifejackets; and listened to several of the other passengers laughing at their lack of faith in the ship.  

"What was it they said, dearest?"  Mycroft asked under his breath, and accepted two of the vests from a white uniformed member of the crew, "The ship can stay afloat with any four of the watertight compartments filled.  Still, put this on, just to be safe."

_ Women and children! _

The crewman's voice called out over the rising background noise of conversation, underscored by the creak of ropes, as the first lifeboat was swung out over the side of the ship.  People weren't exactly flocking to be boarded, and with a vertigo inducing look over the railing, and the sheer fifty-foot drop to the frigid, black water below, Mycroft couldn't entirely blame them.

There were no ships nearby, and there was no one to hear their calls for help, except the disinterested sky and the fathomless ocean.

The Titanic staff seemed utterly unprepared for such a disaster, but were making some attempt to separate out the women and children for rescue. As the first lifeboat, filled with 28 passengers, made its way down the side of the ship, there was some scrambling among the other passengers to be on the next one.

_ Women and children-  women and children, only! _

Still, people were milling about on deck, laughing at the overcaution.  They didn’t want to spend the whole night bobbing around in the cold. And who was to say that a tiny lifeboat was any safer than the warm, lit, and comfortable Titanic?

Beneath them, the ship seemed to right itself for a moment, the starboard tilt leveling out and the crew breathing a sigh of relief that the brothers didn't share.

Water was subject to gravity, it would equalize itself when there was enough.  And as the volume of icy sea water rose, the ship once again began to tilt.

One by one, the lifeboats were lowered down to the water; half filled or less.  Among the gathered passengers, a frisson of fear began to spread. The floor beneath their feet angled towards the ocean, and the miles deep, crushing black water that awaited them.

The grinding sounds had stopped, but then so had the ship. Almost all the passengers had come up on deck by now and there was much screaming, and panicking.

Sherlock held Mycroft’s hand as tight as he could. There is no way he was going to allow anything to keep them apart. 

Not earthquakes, nor hell fires, nor icebergs.

_ Women and children over here! _

“Let’s get ourselves to a lifeboat quickly, Mycie.” Sherlock said. " Come on!" And pulled him towards the other side.

Mycroft's fingers threaded hard through his brother's as they made their way along the railing, following the shrill pipe of the crewman's whistle through the crowd.  From the belly of the ship, more people were streaming up onto deck-- desperate and scared, with stories of the sea green water filling the corridors, flooding one room after another.

"Excuse me!"  Mycroft called out when they reached the boat, already half extended over the side of the ship, and preparing to descend.  The people sitting inside were white faced and shivering, a cluster of women hugging their children, and their friends, as tightly as they could.  Refusing to look over the edge. "Please-"

"Women and children only, sir!  Those're my orders!" But the crewman paused in his work, both hands gripping the ropes as he looked back at Sherlock and Mycroft. 

"Please.  You have room for, at least, another person-"  

"Don't want to overfill them, sir!  Don't want them to capsize, you understand."  

From the other side of the ship, they could hear the ominous crack of gunshots, and the rise of panicked voices.  And from inside the lifeboat, the other crewman seemed to make a choice, "Here now! We could use another pair of hands to row!  Hurry up though!"

The ship shuddered violently.  Already the water was lapping high up the sides of the slanted vessel, the clear pinpoints of light through the portholes glowing green beneath the surface.  

Twenty lifeboats.  Most of them gone, and rowing out to safety.  Over two thousand people. 

And in that moment, everything for Mycroft clarified.  

"Go."  Mycroft squeezed Sherlock's hand bruisingly, and turned his brother towards him to roughly pull the ties on his life jacket tight.  Secure. With a crackling fizz, another distress flare burst, and the clean white light illuminated the determined look on Mycroft's face.  "Don't argue, brother mine. I'll get the next boat. But you must go,  _ now! _ "

_ I love you _ , his speaking gaze promised,  _ I will always love you. _

Sherlock tightened his grip even more, white knuckled, as though defying their very corporeal selves into following any rules of reality.

“No Mycroft!”  He said. “There is no way in Hell that I am going to leave you alone here!”

_ “Sherlock please…”  _ Mycroft was just saying as someone picked up Sherlock, his slim build and smooth young face clearly marking him out as not-yet-a-man.

“No, no, no, no!” Sherlock was screaming as he was carried away, and all but dumped into the lifeboat. “NO! Mycroft!“

Someone held him down to stop him from rocking the boat, and the ropes creaked as it began its descent towards the water.

“Please! Please I want to go back!” He shouted as he thrashed against the persons gripping his shoulders.

Sherlock’s cries turned to tears as he saw Mycroft watching him, receding further and further as the lifeboat was lowered.

He was sobbing by now with his arms out, begging for Mycroft to be in them.

“Please Mycie, please! Don’t make me leave you!”

He could make out the one last kiss that Mycroft blew towards him. 

And then all was dark.

With the crackling fizz of electricity, the lights flickered and flashed once-- bright, as though they were trying to hold back the cold weight of the night-- before succumbing to the water that had invaded every part of the ship.  

On deck the doomed people screamed, and the sound of their terror carried across the stillness of the uncaring Atlantic.

Bow heavy, the ship slanted violently under Mycroft's feet, and only his bone white grip on the rail saved him from careening headlong down the slippery deck.  For an instant in the darkness, he could see Sherlock's life boat, tiny against the water and bobbing on the slow waves as they rowed frantically away from the sinking ship.

_ When this goes under, the suction will take us with her.   _

But Sherlock was alive.  Whatever came next, Mycroft thought, his brother would survive.  Not even the ocean, black and waiting, could extinguish the kindling spark of relief he felt at that.  

Holding on for grim death, he tried not to think about how very cold the water looked.

On the lifeboat, Sherlock just stared at the enormous side of the ship.  And then, in front of his very eyes, the ship broke into two with an ear splitting crack, and started sinking even faster.

It plunged below the surface with the Hellish groan of tortured steel, pushed beyond its limits.

Sherlock felt as though someone had reached into his ribcage and torn his heart out with their bare hands.

_ This could not be happening. They were to go and live together, and build a happy new life for themselves. Not die like this! In a cold watery grave. _

For one second, he contemplated jumping into the water himself. But he realized that it made no sense. 

It would not help him find Mycroft.

He needed to survive, and then look for him… He held his jacket tighter around himself as he became suddenly aware of just how cold it was. 

His fingers brushed against the box in the inside pocket.

The rings!

Sherlock shivered in terror at the thought that he may never see Mycroft again, and he would never be able to give him the ring… Now Mycie would never know what he had wanted to ask him!

He stood there and cried… His body racked with fear…

The desperate cries from the water echoed in the night as the ship finally succumbed to the water, gone.  And beneath the lifeboats, they could hear the ungodly sound of wrenching steel underwater, as it carried more than a thousand people to their deaths. 

Was Mycroft among them?

Screaming... There was screaming...

Someone was wiping his face and making soothing sounds.

“Shhh… Shhh... It’s ok Sherlock! It’s ok. Don’t cry.”

He opened his eyes.  _ Molly _ .

He was in the Good Place. With Molly.

_ So where was Mycroft, and what had happened to him on the Titanic?! _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can also check out the aesthetics for this chapter, [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18026315) and [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18040928)!


	8. Two shadows, reaching through the hopeless, heavy dusk.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which all things are uncertain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a quick thank you to everyone who's taken the time to comment, it really motivates us (and wakes up the muses!)
> 
> The chapter title is from 'The Song of Achilles', by Madeline Miller.
> 
> “In the darkness, two shadows, reaching through the hopeless, heavy dusk. Their hands meet, and light spills in a flood like a hundred golden urns pouring out of the sun.”

**i.**

_ Where was Mycroft, and what had happened to him on the Titanic? _

Sherlock sat up and clutched at Molly’s arms, despair and tragedy etched into his face in a way that alarmed her greatly.

“What is it Sherlock? What happened to you?”

“I don’t know Molly. I don’t know.” He was babbling, the words just pouring out, uncontrolled. “But I was on the lifeboat and Mycroft! He was on the Titanic when it sank. I don’t know if he survived Molly, and I was going to propose to him and now he will never know how much I...” Suddenly he bit his tongue, aware that he may have said too much.

Sherlock stepped back and took a deep breath, and Molly just stood there, her jaw dropped and eyes wide open.

Then she blinked, took a sip from her glass of water, and asked him carefully, “Did you say you were going to propose to Mycroft? Your brother? Mycroft Holmes? And he was on the Titanic? When it sank…” 

It sounded mad.  But then, so did everything that had happened to them since their deaths.

Sherlock was staring at her as though he, himself, was yet to process what he had said. But he had known without a shadow of doubt that it was all real. The feelings were real, the tragedy was real. 

It had happened.

How, and why, they were able to visit those memories?  He could not fathom. But that had been a lifetime in a parallel, or a past universe, when they had been together.

Brothers. Lovers.

Brothers  _ and _ lovers.

“And now he will never know how much you…” Molly prompted gently.

“Love him.” Sherlock whispered. “How much I love him.”

As soon as he said those words aloud, there was a silence in the room. Both of them seemed to have stopped breathing.

Sherlock could almost see the words hanging in the air.

Love.

I love him.

How much I love him.

He felt as though his very molecular structure had been reconfigured with those words. When he accepted them.

Everything changed.

For it was the truth. The fundamental truth of his very existence. Or as he now suspected, of his many existences.

He looked at Molly, his expression so vulnerable that it melted her heart. She had always had a soft spot for him, ever since they’d first met. She knew he was special. She knew he would never be hers.

And now she thought she knew why.

But she needed to check.

Molly sat next to him on the sofa and held his hand folded between her smaller ones.

“Sherlock? It’s ok. I think it’s something you have always known, and something all of us have always seen. And I know for sure that he loves you, too. As a brother of course. But you were going to propose, you said? So do you think that in the earlier life maybe you were not brothers?”

Sherlock shook his head decisively.  That, at least, was something he was certain of.   “No Molly, we were. We were brothers. And lovers.” And how delicious that word sounded on his tongue. “And I HAVE to go back and ask him if he knows what happened to him when the ship sank. Did I live without him? I can’t...”  He faltered, “I can’t imagine doing that. Being without him. In any lifetime. Even in the afterlife. Molly, I have to go back!”

“Yes, of course you must Sherlock. Go ahead. I will stay guard over here.” Molly said, looking troubled.

_ Could this be the reason for the error? How would they solve it without separating them again? _

As Molly sat in vigil, Sherlock returned his Mind Palace, frantically searching, hoping that Mycroft would be there.

_ Where are you, brother mine? _

_ Mycroft? My… Love? _

_ Please be there. Please don’t make me do this alone! _

As he raced through the corridors, glancing this way and that; peeking through arches overgrown with vines, pushing open old gates: Sherlock finally glimpsed one corridor where he thought he could see a figure slumped next to the end.

“Mycie?”

He rushed there to find Mycroft sitting against the wall, head in his hands. 

Sherlock sat down next to him, and took his hands in his own.

“Mycie? I am here Mycie. Please tell me what happened next? I can’t remember. What happened to you? What happened to  _ us _ ?”

 

**ii.**

He had never been so cold.

It was a living thing, curling up through his veins; ice water in his blood, flooding through his body until the tiny fragments of crystallized salt had penetrated his bones.  Mycroft was cold through to his marrow, and he didn’t know if he would ever be warm again.

He’d fled the room when the lights had suddenly plunged him into hideous blackness; fumbling frantically for the door handle and lurching, blinded with the suddenly light and unshed tears, into the corridor once more.

And he’d run, on shaking legs made clumsy by the remembered cold.  It wasn’t like watching a movie-- someone else’s vision given a sympathetic part of his mind.  It had slotted under his skin with muscle memory. Organic.

Like it had always been there, and he had simply forgotten.

Mycroft could remember the impossible, drowning depths beneath his feet as he kicked and kicked, reaching for the surface.  And he could remember the cold.

He didn’t think he would ever be allowed to forget the cold.

With a violent shudder, Mycroft had curled into the corner, his knees drawn up hard to his chest, and hands planted flat on the floor.  Even then, it was hard to believe that he was safe. That the floor was solid, and not going to shift and sway beneath him. He was safe here, but his body couldn’t believe what his eyes were telling him.  

He’d been there.  Impossible as it sounded, even to his own ears.  Words he couldn’t bring himself to say aloud, because they were too vast.  And they changed  _ everything _ .

Mycroft had always known he was going to die.  He was mortal. And it was the understanding that all people were born with.

The innate awareness that, one day, this would all be over.

Mycroft had never had faith in a higher power.  He’d stopped attending the church of his childhood-- a small, whitewashed affair at the edge of the their idyllic town-- as soon as he was old enough to decide for himself where to spend his Sundays.  And he’d only prayed a handful of times in his life.

Pleading intercession from an unhearing God, for a brother that desperately needed, and didn’t want, his help.

But Mycroft had always prided himself on being a logical man.

And faced with new evidence, what else could he do but amend his previous theory?  He would not be ruled by comfortable confirmation bias… 

Yet, huddled on the floor, trembling helplessly against a remembered cold, he shied from the facts he knew to be true.  Knew with a certainly that hadn’t succumbed, even in death.

It had been _ him _ .

And it had been  _ Sherlock _ .

Mycroft could remember the small, round smallpox vaccine scar he’d seen on his brother’s arm.  At the time, he hadn’t thought anything of it-- but it was a scar that Sherlock, his Sherlock, didn’t have.  

And that Sherlock, for all they looked like mirror images, didn’t have the scar on his chest where his brother had been shot.  They were such tiny detail, but it was still evidence. Two more signs that it hadn’t been just a shared hallucination, but a memory dredged up from some fragment of their past.

And they had been…

“Oh Lord.”

Still shaking and blue lipped, Mycroft curled his fingers against the reassuring marble solidity of the floor.  

They’d shared a bed before-- but as children!  Now he could remember the curling, warm delight in his brother’s stolen kisses, and wondered if the man he knew would have the same weight in his arms.  The same playful habit of nipping his lower lip when he thought Mycroft was distracted. 

_ Would Sherlock ever-- _

_ Stop this.  Immediately.  Mycroft Holmes, he is your  _ _ brother _ _!  Whatever filthy, shameful mistakes you may have made in the past, there is no excuse for dwelling on those things now. _

But it hadn’t felt like a mistake.  

For a short time, Mycroft could remember being more simply and incandescently happy than he had ever been in this life.

Then Sherlock’s voice cut through his reverie, and Mycroft’s heart began to beat again.


	9. What is dark within me, illumine.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which confusion leads to revelation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It seems especially right to be posting a chapter today, after the announcement that ao3 has been nominated for a Hugo award! 
> 
> The chapter title is from John Milton's 'Paradise Lost'.
> 
> Now, on to the chapter!

**iii.**

Sherlock’s hands were an anchor, more solid and safe than the floor had ever been.  Even if his voice cracked over his words, and both of them were disheveled and frantic for reassurance-- he was alive, and that was all that mattered.

“Lock… Thank God… When you vanished, I feared…” 

_ I was so afraid.  I watched you for as long as I could, but it was so cold, and so dark.  One moment you were beside me, and the next? I couldn’t protect you.. I tried… I tried… _

From his place on the floor, Mycroft brought their joined hands hard to his mouth; eyes closed as he pressed a breathless kiss to their overlapped fingers.  And for a long moment, he didn’t say anything at all. 

Both of them, slumped into the uncomfortable corner of a corridor they hadn’t created.  Clinging to one another, because it was the only thing that felt real. 

_ My how the mighty have fallen _ .

“Shh, it’s alright now, Lock.”  Mycroft gulped back a breath and forced his voice to artificial calm.  His brother needed him. He had to hold himself together. “I’m right here, and that was all in the past.  All of it.” 

He untangled their fingers and, with a slow tenderness, cupped Sherlock’s cheek and turned his face to meet his own tear glazed gaze.  “Whatever happened, we clearly managed to find our way back together again. That’s what matters, isn’t it? I’ll always be there for you.  Always.”

It would be so easy to kiss him.

With another man’s muscle memory, Mycroft knew a shade of what it would feel like.  How Sherlock would -- would have?-- frozen for an instant, before gathering him in close.  Both of them finding comfort in the tangible, living press of warm skin and quickening breaths.

The shiver that slid down his spine had nothing to do with cold, or revulsion…  _ And what does that say about you? _

Sherlock took a deep breath as he tried to control his own trembling. He was shaking, from the terror of what he had seen, as well as from the relief of seeing Mycroft again.

They were here now, together, holding hands.

_ Did it really matter how it had ended the last time? _

Mycie was right. He would  _ always _ be there for him. Always.

Even from one lifetime to another, because somehow their souls or identities were so tethered to one another with an indissoluble bond that even death and rebirth had not managed to keep them apart.

They had found each other once again in England … And a thought slowly emerged.

_ Had there been other lifetimes? Other occasions? Other ways in which their stories had ended?  _

_ Dare he hope that one of them had had a happily ever after? _

Sherlock’s heart leaped up as he wondered _.  _ It was possible, perhaps even probable, if the number of new doors were any indication!

He looked at Mycie holding their clasped hands, Mycie’s elegant fingers tangled within his own, grasping them together, urgently almost frantically. He felt his lips on his fingers, and felt a flush rise up his own cheeks as a memory bubbled through him. 

The memory of those lips on his own lips, those elegant fingers on his hips, holding him gently but firmly, and Mycie’s hot breath on his neck as he…

He blinked _. Mycroft was asking him something…  _

“Sherlock?   _ Sherlock. _ ”  Mycroft repeated again, his fingers squeezing firmly to catch his brother’s attention.  A few weeks ago he would have found it vaguely irritating, being pushed to the outside while his brilliant brother puzzled through his deductions-- but now?

Death had framed things in a very new perspective.  What they had  _ seen _ had changed things-- though, at the moment, Mycroft wasn’t sure how.  

Like tectonic plates shifting, apparently older than they had realized, the landscape of their relationship was slowly changing.

“Welcome back, brother mine.”  He added after a beat, aiming for dry and witty, and falling just a little short.  It probably had something to do with the way the two of them were huddled in the corner, shoulders pressed tight together.  “At first I thought this was a dream. But it was… Far too vivid. And--’

_ And things I would never have dreamed for myself, or for you.  I could tell you that I was more horrified by leaving you, helpless and alone on the water, than I was of… everything else. Can you forgive me for that? _

Swallowing hard, Mycroft looked down at the marble floor, and traced the webbing, cracked patterns of grey with his eyes.  “I’m not certain what any of this means. Or how it’s happening. But we’ve clearly… Known? One another before. Done this… Before.”  

_ We’ve been brothers before. _

With a faint tremor in his hands, Mycroft smoothed the pad of his thumb over Sherlock’s knuckles, half aware of the way they fit seamlessly.  Fingers slotted together and hooked to make sure the other couldn’t vanish.

“If that’s true… It would explain the new rooms. New hallways.  They are ours-- but not the us we can consciously remember. And I don’t know what we’ll find behind the others.”

“Mycie ? You do remember what happened on the Titanic, don’t you?” Sherlock asked him, hesitantly. “Not what happened when it sank. Before. The three nights that we spent on the ship.”

He paused. Then he whispered. “Together. You… you do remember those?”

_ Please please Mycie say you remember them. Tell me they were real! Tell me that you loved me. You still do. Not just as a brother. Please say it Mycie! Say it! _

Mycroft’s jaw was clenched so tight that the tiny muscles at the corners twitched under pressure.  As if he could have forgotten! 

He wanted to tell Sherlock to leave it alone.  Some things--  _ those things _ \-- were probably best buried. Deep. Where neither of them could ever find them again.  They were sinful things; not that Mycroft had ever cared about the moral distinction!

Sherlock’s voice was so soft, so unsure, seeping through the cracks in Mycroft’s armor.

“I remember.”  He said tightly, his tongue curling around the words uncomfortably, “I’m certain you’re… Disgusted.  By those memories.” 

As he should be.  As they both should be!

And as Mycroft wasn’t.  Not when his hands itched to pull Sherlock closer.  To close the space between them and--

_ Enough!   _

Sherlock looked at him in despair. Even though he was actually inside Mycroft’s Mind Palace, how could his older brother manage to keep secrets from him?

_ Mycroft please don’t say that! I was not disgusted! Not at all… .I felt completed. Loved. So loved. Fulfilled. Were you disgusted by them? By me? By being with me? As a lover? I was going to propose to you Mycie. My love. Please don't tell me it was a lie! _

And then Sherlock took his courage in his hands, and decided to do what he had always done. If Mycroft would always be a diplomat, even in the afterlife, then he would always be the pirate.

“What if I wasn’t disgusted?” He asked Mycroft, his voice remarkably steady given that his very soul was shivering in fear and anticipation.

Mycroft's breath felt expelled from his lungs in a burning rush, hard and fast like Sherlock had landed a physical blow.  If he wasn't disgusted? What did that say about them  _ both _ ?

"Sherlock..."  He started, and the usually measured cadence of his voice sounded frayed at the edges, "We've both been through a great deal.  Even if we weren't disgusted at the time.. That... Certainly doesn't mean that we have to carry those..." 

The tip of Mycroft's tongue darted out to moisten his lips.  He had to take care of Sherlock-- especially now that things were so strange and uncertain.  But it was impossible to turn and meet his gaze, his courage faltering. "I don't want you to make any decisions now, that you may... regret.  In the future. When things are less... difficult.'

"Yes, we had a life that seems to have been..."  Mycroft trailed off, and released Sherlock's hand so he could rub his own exhaustedly over his face, "Spent together.  I'm not disgusted. I know I should be! I do... But the evidence of one lifetime, and my own lack of moral compass, aren't enough for me to risk... You."

_ Your loss would break my heart.  Believe me, brother? What I do, I do for you.  To keep you safe. I can't promise I'll survive my escape, and if you loved me? ... It will hurt you even more if I fail.  And I won't bring you any more pain. _

Sherlock felt all his natural confidence return. He felt a surge of joy bubbling up inside him.

_ Mycie hadn’t denied it! He had not been disgusted by it! _

It was a start! The rest would come.

“When things are less difficult?!” He laughed. “Mycie! Talk about understatements! I seem to be trapped in some insane version of Heaven and you are suffering in Hell! I don’t care if it gets more difficult or less difficult.”

He came closer and held that beloved face in his hands. “Mycie… All I care about is that I loved you. I loved you then… And I love you now. And not just as a brother. And even if the life we knew in London when we died, and the lifetime we just saw on the Titanic, did not end happily?  There HAS to be a life which did have a happy ending, and I am determined to find it! Will you help me? Please?”

“Sherlock…”  

“Oh Mycie, there is no risk, there is no moral compass to think of… There is nothing to regret. The  _ only  _ thing I will regret is to have reached the end of our lives without having ever said this to you. Even if you can’t or won’t say it back to me? I need you to hear it. I love you. You are my one true love. Wherever you are is my Heaven and without you? Even Heaven is a torment. I love you Mycie. I love you.” 

Sherlock’s fingers burned Mycroft’s cheeks, each new touch forging new bridges over years of antagonism and estrangement.  And Mycroft wanted to tell him-- but the words caught in his throat and refused to be said aloud.  _ I love you.  But I can’t. Not yet. _

“I’ll help you.”  He finally murmured, quiet and resigned in the face of his brother’s love.

How much time they’d wasted!  

Or had they?

All around them were hallways, branching off in a maze that sprawled far wider than the Mind Palaces they’d created on their own.  Maybe there were answers here. 

Unsteady but determined, Mycroft rose to his feet, and caught his brother’s hand tightly, “We might as well start with the door in front of us.  I don’t recognize it.”

And so they pushed the door open, and hoped for a happier ending.


	10. We reached for each other--

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the Holmes brothers look backwards for clarity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone, we hope you're having an amazing week! Like the last flashback, this one will also be in two part.
> 
> The chapter title is from Madeline Miller.

**i.**

Once again, Sherlock had to rein in his inborn impatience, his thoughts turning over and over in his mind like a mantra.

_ Mycie thinks his love will put me at risk! He hasn’t denied it. But he can’t say it yet. I can see it in his eyes though.  _

_ And he held my hand as though we have been doing it forever.  _

_ I can wait. I can do this. I know he will say it. Maybe not now…but soon!   _

_ I need to find another lifetime, some more evidence. _

So he gripped his brother’s hand back and walked through this new door, only to find themselves right in central London! They could see the Tower in the distance, and plenty of familiar looking houses, although they seemed to be more thatched and wooden than made with bricks; and the people were dressed differently. 

_ Was it the Regency period? Tudor? Jacobean?  _

He seemed to have deleted all the details. 

_ Surely big brother would know.  _

“Who do you think is the reigning monarch Mycroft? Queen Elizabeth the First?”

“I couldn’t say, brother mine…  Post medieval, but clearly before central plumbing became commonplace.”

Which, considering that was a 450 year gap?  Didn’t really narrow it down.

It was London, but not as either of them had seen it before.  The streets were cramped and narrow, and Mycroft refused to look too closely at the foul, sticking mess beneath their feet.  The cobbled lanes were uneven, and the heat that reflected up from the stones was stifling. Already, Mycroft could feel damp sweat collecting at his temples and beneath the collar of his creased suit.

The wind was brisk, blowing the scent of wood smoke and baking down the street; clearly from the row of cook shops and bakeries at the end of the lane.   _ Baker Street _ , informed a small address plaque on the brick wall.  

The whole of the city felt baked dry, and the wind carried grit of summer dust that made them blink, and itch.  

And yet, there was something about it that felt familiar; the curve of the street, perhaps?  Mycroft wasn’t sure. 

“Sherlock, look.”  His voice pitched quiet, Mycroft motioned towards a figure that had just stepped out of a small carriage across the claustrophobically narrow street.

Even at a distance, Mycroft would know those black curls anywhere.  Though now they were worn longer, resting on the shoulders of a brocaded frock coat that gave width to his lean frame.  In this poorer part of the city, the cut and quality of his clothes left no doubt in Mycroft’s sinking heart that he didn’t live there.  How many times had be pulled his brother from the rough side of the city? High and frenetic, spinning wildly out of control? 

Was this a habit that had repeated itself?  And if so, where was  _ he _ ?

Unconsciously, Mycroft gripped Sherlock’s hand tighter.  He wouldn’t lose him here.

Sherlock looked at himself stepping out of the carriage into that familiar lane.

_ How many hundreds of times in his latest life had he stepped into that street and hailed a taxi?  _

But it did not appear as though he lived here in this life.

_ Then why was he here? _

The new Sherlock’s body language appeared somewhat on edge.  _ Anxious? Excited? _

He felt his stomach lurch.

_ Surely he wasn’t doing drugs and meeting a dealer was he? He had no wish to have Mycroft see him like that.  _

He saw himself quickly look in all directions while pretending to be very calm, and then saw himself disappear as he ducked into the entrance of a narrow building.

And they followed.

 

**ii.**

There were always places in London for people to meet in quiet.  The upper floor of the Baker Street apartment felt grimy with the heat, and the city had been roasting under the summer sun for days.  It was a far cry from the respectable neighbourhood Mycroft called home-- but needs must.

And with Sherlock, the need had always ruled them both.

Exhausted, he threw open the shutters in the hope of coaxing through some of the wind.  Anything to ease the stifling, leaden air in the flat. He was early-- but he hadn’t seen his brother in more than a week, and he’d been both too eager, and too guilt ridden, to stay at home with his dear wife.

_ She deserved better than this.  _

The sun caught on the copper in his hair as Mycroft leaned against the bare windowpane, his eyes on the city, instead of the dingy little bolthole. 

But it was theirs.  Their secret corner of the city, where they could be together.

Sherlock knocked softly on the door to the upper floor apartment. He knew, that as always, Mycroft would be there before him.

Always vigilant. Always worried.

He smiled to himself.  _ Always eager. _

Sherlock’s smile grew wider as the door opened, and he saw what his eyes had been thirsting for. That beautiful pale visage with the thick auburn curls. Those blue-grey eyes that were looking at him as if he was a cool drink on a hot day.

_ And it was a hot day wasn’t it? _

Just one more excuse to shed his coat and open the buttons of his silk shirt as he walked in and drew the curtains, while Mycroft closed the door.

Sherlock turned and held open his arms, his voice playful and soft, “Come to me love! It has been so long!”

In half an instant, Mycroft felt the disordered shards of his life fall once more into place.

It had always been like this between them; a force greater than either of them could control.  

Truthfully, it hadn’t been a conscious decision, either.  Their parents had been in London for most of their quiet childhood, leaving the children to their nannies and the rest of the staff to raise.  When Sherlock had been sick, or hurt, he had turned to his big brother.

Mycroft had framed the world for him, and they’d explored it together.

“Dramatic in the first, dearest.  Must everything be a production?” Mycroft teased through smiling lips.  Maybe this had never been wise for them; it was possessive and protective, their love-- but it was their truth. 

And in these stolen moments, it was the only truth either of them cared to acknowledge.

In his eyes, Sherlock was the most beautiful man alive; and reaching for him, the tips of his fingers skimming over his pale chest, Mycroft never failed to be grateful.  

There were things you didn’t thank God for, and so he refrained, and bent his head to capture a fleeting kiss instead.

“So long, and too long.  Far, far too long.” Mycroft breathed in the scent of him, and his lips brushed over the newly revealed ridge of his brother’s collar, “The King has had me travelling a great deal, and I am endlessly grateful to be home.”

“Oh brother!” Sherlock breathed back, his voice rough with the sudden desire that leaped inside his heart, swooped in his stomach, and made him feel almost dizzy with lust.

He felt as though he was branded at every spot that his lover’s lips touched his skin.

With unsteady, impatient hand, he rushed to remove Mycroft’s clothes.

_ Why did he wear so many layers? _

As he almost ripped his shirt off, threads straining at the seams, and then his hands roamed that lovely freckled back, cool against his hot palms… finally,  _ finally…  _ he sighed.

A decade of knowing that touch, and it still unravelled him every single time. 

The hunger, the want, the desperate keening need to merge with his beloved’s body, to hear him gasp, to hear him call out his name.

He would never tire of it.

These precious moments he would keep in his mind for as long as he lived, and even afterwards… like pearls in a velvet case.  Treasured, and hoarded away where nobody else could see.

“Please.” He said as Mycroft drew away to look at him. “Touch me Mycroft, please!”

For ten years they’d waited for the burning edges of their desire to cool-- and yet, as every season rolled into the next, it became more and more obvious that nothing was going to change.

It was a part of them, essential and unquestionable.  Sherlock was under Mycroft’s skin, and with long-denied hands he clutched his brother tight to his chest.  

In deference to the heat, neither of them had bothered with the fashionable periwigs; it was nearly too hot for their own hair, and Mycroft could feel the sweat on the nape of his brother’s neck when he combed his fingers through the damp, black curls.  

Frock coats, pressed and wilting in the summer humidity, were discarded over the arm of the single chair in the room.  It leaned under the weight of the fine tailoring, and protested as their shirts-- Sherlock’s watery silk, and Mycroft’s light linen-- were thrown haphazardly onto the heap.

It was always like this, at first. 

The frantic need to reconnect, and to erase the words they said to one another when they met in public.  These were things brothers did not do. Did not crave.

Yet, they did.

And they could speak after the touch starved ache had been appeased.  Their clothing shed until there was nothing but the honest flesh between them; the low creak of the slat board bed, and the rustle of the straw mattress, half drowning out the sounds from the city below.

Sherlock wiped away a fragile tear from the corner of his eye when the pleasure peaked and his very soul seemed sated.

This.  _ Here _ . This was his holy communion, more than any other place.  This room was his place of worship, and hearing his name from his beloved’s lips was all the blessing he had ever wanted in his life.

Never a religious man himself, Sherlock scorned the ‘make believe’ teachings of the so–called spiritual ‘fathers’.  Charlatans, all of them. 

But this? The connection of his soul and his mind and his heart with his beloved? This was his Heaven. This journey, every week or regrettably even less frequently-- This journey was his pilgrimage.

He knew that Mycroft still suffered pangs of guilt and worry. Constantly.  _ But for himself? _ This felt so right, and even pure, despite what society may say and their ludicrous rules may demand.

When they had heard that man Isaac Newton speak some weeks ago, explaining in the Royal Court how a prism split the rays of the Sun into the rainbow?  Sherlock had met Mycroft’s eyes across that grand room, and let him know with his glance that yes, this was exactly how he felt about his brother.

His older brother, his beloved, was the prism that had taken Sherlock’s blinding brilliance, which was threatening to burn him, and transformed him into a rainbow of all colours and spectrums.  Allowed him to simmer down and be less volatile, less likely to incinerate other people with the fury of his words, less likely to rage over other people’s inevitable stupidity.

He traced a series of loops and whorls languidly on Mycroft’s back as he pillowed his head on his chest, and murmured.  “You know I love you more than life itself don’t you? My precious… my beautiful… My beloved?”

With a teasing hum, he recited, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate… So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.” 

And he shifted to kiss him again, and again. 


	11. Loving him in silence.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there are deductions, and promises.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And the second half of the chapter!
> 
> The titles are taken from Madeline Miller's, 'The Song of Achilles'.
> 
> “We reached for each other, and I thought of how many nights I had lain awake in this room loving him in silence.”

**iii.**

For all it was forbidden-- and death, or worse, if they were discovered-- Mycroft had never wanted to mourn their love.  Sherlock was the incandescent heart of him, the light that coloured everything beautiful.

The purest joys of his life had been found in his arms.  How could that be wrong? 

At some point, they’d managed to kick the rough, woolen blanket to the end of the bed, discarded in the summer heat.  Even with the window open it was beastly hot, and curled together on the narrow bed, Mycroft amused his idle hands by tracing the tiny rivulets of sweat that trailed down his brother’s chest.

From this angle, he could see the minute fluttering of his heart, quick beneath the pink flush of his skin.   _ No _ , he thought contentedly, this could never be wrong.  Others may not understand, but they had always known that the rules of the world should not apply to them.

Lazy and sated with the closeness of him, Mycroft breathed a laugh into Sherlock’s damp black curls, and squeezed him just a little tighter, one warm arm thrown haphazardly across his waist. “I should ask you to write me a sonnet of your own, instead of borrowing from another’s man’s affections…  But I know.” He paused a beat to lift his head, and met Sherlock’s gaze for an instant, before resting it back against his chest.

“You’ve never given me reason to doubt…  How long do we have before your wife realizes you’re absent?”

_ Wife. _ Sherlock thought with the bitterness and guilt that rose with the bile every time he thought of her.

Their match had been arranged by their parents, as was the way things worked in families like theirs. A remote cousin of the Queen had seemed like a worthy bride; an accomplished woman who came with her own castle in Scotland that she would eventually inherit. An intelligent but shrewish woman, utterly mis-matched to Sherlock in temperament.

All of which had been possible to gauge during the brief courtship, but Sherlock had been past caring at that point.

Mycroft was married. He could never be with him openly. Finding his own bride seemed to be the only way to draw one more veil over his deepest desires. A veil over the eyes of society and family. 

He had even managed to have relations with her, often enough to let her believe that he was also willing to plan for a child.

_ A child?! _

That was the last thing he wanted, but his life seemed to be a runaway horse nowadays, with the only semblance of clarity and peace coming from these stolen moments. From these whispered endearments, from the brush of his lips against that cool skin.

“Do you  _ have _ to remind me of Sally at this time?” Sherlock groaned as he looked up at the ceiling. “She will be busy for another two hours at least. When do you have to get back to Molly?”

He liked Molly and he knew that Mycroft did too. But each man in his life plays many roles. They managed to play a good son and good brother, good husband, good everything else for the world.

But a good lover? That was only possible when they were with each other.

Mycroft bit his tongue, and heaved a resigned sigh.  Of course he didn’t want to remind his brother, but what other choice did they have?  Their happiness hinged on their ability to keep this silent. And unlike his own wife (Molly, sweet Molly, who deserved better than he had given her) Sally possessed a temper to rival Sherlock’s.

And their marriage had never been a peaceful one.

“Oh Mycroft!” Sherlock said in despair. “We are going to go to Hell for doing this. Aren’t we?”

_ If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads… _

And how much more damned were they, when the spilled blood ran the same in both their veins?  

There was no denying their shared lineage; they had the same hands, the same eyes (in different blues) and their minds had always been unique to them.  The mad brilliance of the Holmes line turned like a lens until it caught the light, blinding and focused. 

Hot enough to burn.

“Hush, my dearest one..  No... “ Mycroft shushed, and propped himself on his elbow so he could look down at his brother’s despairing face.  The straw and rough, hessian sacking crackled under them when he moved; but it was soft enough to pass as a mattress in this part of the city.  Slowly, Mycroft mapped his fingertips across Sherlock’s cheek, tracing the bones he loved so well.

“I swear to you, you will not.  You are mine, and I am yours-- haven’t we always known that truth?  So the Devil cannot have you. I will build us a home at the edge of Hell, if I must.  And he can rail and scream, and beat against the doors until it exhausts him-- but I will keep you safe.  I swear it.”

“Speaking of hellfires,” Sherlock said suddenly, and half sat up in bed, “Can you smell something burning?”

Mycroft glanced back over his shoulder towards the open window, though he could only see the slanted peaks of the neighbouring rooves, and the swiftly darkening sky.  He’d hardly noticed the smell at first; wood smoke was common enough, and the street was lined with bakeries at the far end.

But they would have done their daily baking in the morning, and wouldn’t be lighting the fires again for hours.  

And there was no need for a fire in the hearth in this blistering summer weather!  It had been baking the city dry for days, simply waiting for a spark, and--

“You’re right, brother mine...”

With a strange, sinking feeling, Mycroft swung his feet over the side of the low bed and reached for his breeches. His linen shirt was pulled unceremoniously over his head, and stockings ignored, as he made his way over to the open window.

There was smoke.

A thin, dusky haze of it that seemed to be rising up from somewhere closer to the Thames, he supposed; a house lit ablaze, perhaps, or one of the cook shops being too liberal with the oil.  It had been known to happen. People were exhausted and made careless in the heat, and accidents came with human error.

“Something is burning, down at the river, I believe.”

Sherlock also got off the bed and made his way to the window. He leaned out as much as he could and sniffed the air. This wasn’t just something burning. This was… Like everything burning.

He turned to Mycroft with a thoughtful expression. “Do you remember the experiment I was doing with tobacco ashes? Well I tried matching the odours of different kinds of ashes too, and what I am smelling now seems to be a mixture of hay, wood, cloth… And if it is possible, even flesh.”

None of these scents would have been strange in London.  They were all part of the usual hum of life in the busy, overcrowded city.

But this was different.  Stronger. And from their second floor perch, higher than several of the buildings in the district, the Holmes brothers watched from their window as the line of smoke turned thick, and black.  Against the dark night, it was lit from below with a Hellish red, a broad band of flickering flame and curling, suffocating smoke.

It was still some ways away, but it would spread.  And even now, they could smell the charnel house reek of it, fanned hard by the same wind that had offered little reprieve during the day.  

Man and meat smelled much the same as they burned.

Sherlock sniffed again and came to a terrible conclusion. “Mycroft! This is no ordinary fire. And look at the amount of smoke rising! It looks like the whole neighbourhood is burning.  We need to get out of here, quickly. And check on Mrs. Hudson, also. She is probably sleeping off one of her herbal soothers, or getting that idiot help of hers to prepare the dough for the bakery.” He pulled of his own clothes rapidly as he spoke, and helped Mycroft into his coat, too.

They needed to find out what was happening, and see how they could help. This area was all thatched houses and the lanes were too narrow, and the yards were always filled with woodpiles and drying clothes and suddenly in his mind’s eye he could see every single flammable thing spread out over this locality like a tinderbox.

“Come on Mycroft! Let’s go!” Sherlock said impatiently as he opened the door, and held out his hand to his older brother.

In a rush of braces and linen, they righted themselves; fingers hastily dragged through knotted hair to set it right, and hose buttoned hurriedly into place.  Such things were simply habit, forged through a decade of secrecy. Even now, the charade needed to be maintained.

Nobody could know why they had been here today.  Nobody could ever know. Their wives thought they were collecting rents; and they had never questioned it.  

But as Mycroft fastened his collar at the base of his throat, his fingers paused on the tiny buttons.  Eventually they would discover the truth. Molly was too bright, and Sally too tenacious, and neither of them could let a mystery go unsolved.  

In that moment, smoke infecting the night air, and Sherlock’s words ringing in his mind,  _ We are going to go to Hell for doing this. Aren’t we?,  _ Mycroft could see the terrible folly of it all.  The fine edge of their deception could not be carried along forever.

And Molly, his dear Molly, who had been so much better than he deserved-- should have a husband who would love her as he had never been able to.  Someone who could give her the second child she longed for -- and he knew she did, even though she had never recriminated him for it -- while she was still young enough to enjoy them.  

Slowly, Mycroft thumbed the heavy signet ring on his finger, and the embellished H on the crest.  It would all pass to his son when he was gone; the Holmes family was not indecently wealthy, but Molly and William would be comfortable.

There were so many things he had wanted to teach his son.  He was brilliant and gentle hearted, and could Mycroft sacrifice his chance to see the man his son would become?

Was this love worth the cost?

When they were discovered-- and eventually, Mycroft was certain they would--  it could destroy his William’s chances at a respectable future.

But he and Sherlock would not, perhaps  _ could not _ , survive separation.  Not anymore.

Perhaps they never could.

“Mrs. Hudson keeps some of her late husband’s clothes still in the attic.  Nobody would recognize us in them.” It would be so easy; a change of clothes, and they could sell their own fine things.  They could leave the city, and begin anew. 

Let the Holmes brothers go, lost in the fire.

“Brother mine...”  Mycroft murmured, his expression waxy pale; like a man that had caught sight of a beckoning ghost, and didn’t know if he should follow, “Should we go?  Properly. Away from London… Entirely.” 

Sherlock just stopped and stared at him as though Mycroft had suddenly started speaking to him in Greek.

In fact, Greek would have made more sense than this madness.

It took all of three seconds for his brain to catch up with what he had just heard. As soon as he realized what Mycroft meant, he felt a sense of an utterly unexpected delight.

_ Yes of course! Mycroft was always the smart one wasn’t he? _

From what he could deduce, given the size and location of the fire and the direction of the wind, large swathes of this part of the city were going to burn.

_ This could be their chance at an escape. To a new life! _

Freed of the burdens of wives and domesticity and the tangled web of deceit they had been forced to weave around themselves.

Sherlock looked down at his hands. He was wearing four heavy gold rings and so was Mycroft. They could sell those and find horses to take them to the coast and then France by boat and they could start anew.

He would do anything, any job, any amount of hard work if he could be with his beloved every day, not hiding, not lying. Not living in fear of being separated, or punished, or worse.

He held Mycroft’s face and kissed him on the lips.

“You, my love, are truly the cleverest man in Britain! Let us make sure Mrs. Hudson is safe, and then we will find a way out from the other side of the yard and not stop till we reach France. Maybe even Spain? Maybe sail to the New World! The ends of the earth? I don’t care! As long as I never ever have to be without you.”

 

**iv.**

It would be the most selfish moment of Mycroft’s life.  But it was a far kinder thing for his son to mourn a father that died a good man, than to know the truth, and let his future be destroyed by it.  Molly would keep him safe, and teach him well.

And Sally would watch over them both.  

“To France, yes… The last place anyone would think to look.”

For a long moment, the brothers leaned into one another, foreheads together and fingers laced tight.  There was no time to plan, no chance of returning; and in those few stolen seconds, they made their peace with that decision.

Forward.  The fool’s errand into the unknown, with only the desperate hope that it would come right in the end.

With a last tight grip of their hands they made their way down the narrow, creaking staircase.  Already the air was thicker with smoke, and flecks of ash from the fire spreading outwards from the waterside.  

With little time, and much to do, Mycroft branched to the left to find Anderson, Mrs. Hudson’s errand boy.  They would need clothes, and transport; the horse and cart he used to deliver the bread would suffice for the time being.

He simply had to convince him.

Meanwhile, Sherlock branched to the right, in search of the kindly older lady that had rented from them (and allowed them use of her upstairs room) for so many years.  

“Hurry, brother mine.”  Mycroft insisted under his breath, low and pressed, “I’ll meet you outside…”

 

**v.**

From the street, Mycroft and Sherlock watched as their mirror images; their fine clothes traded for homespun, and only the coins in their purses, fled the city ahead of the flames that would consume so much of London.

Perhaps the rest of their memories-- those memories, of that life, and the love that had so dominated it-- were behind other doors.  Scattered through the joined Mind Palace like the chapters of a book. 

Sherlock had wanted to find a life where they were happy.  And maybe this had been that lucky life. They couldn’t be sure.

Sherlock had been watching all this in stunned silence, and as both the men faded out of their view he turned to look at Mycroft. And realized that they were holding hands. They were gripping each other’s hands, in fact, white-knuckled and tight.

Mycroft was stubbornly refusing to look at him, but Sherlock knew he could hear him.

“Mycie?” He said softly, “How many lifetimes do we have to see, before you accept that this was our truth? The only truth? What if we’ve been separated in the afterlife as a test, or maybe as an experiment? Or...” He conceded with a shrug, “Or maybe as a punishment. I don’t care. All I care about is that I loved you then, and I love you now. I will always love you.”

He raised their joined hands and kissed Mycroft’s fingers, sealing his words against his skin.

“You are, and have always been, my… Everything. In every life. With no regrets. And there is no way in Hell that I am going to let you suffer wherever you are trapped right now.”

He turned to face Mycroft, a determined light in his eyes, “My logical deduction is that you are currently trapped in a closed room, empty and barren, dull beyond measure and lonely as a dead planet. You must be. Because that would be my idea of Hell. My room at home when you were away. The absence of you is my personal Hell, Mycie.”

Then he delivered the final salvo. Soft yet deadly. 

“And you can no longer deny it, because your personal Heaven seems to be 221B. The place where I lived. Isn’t that true Mycie?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone curious about the Great Fire of London, you can check out the wiki page at:  
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Fire_of_London
> 
> And there's a wonderful painting of it at:  
> https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b6/Great_Fire_London.jpg/1920px-Great_Fire_London.jpg


	12. Man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Of best laid plans.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title is from the poem 'Andrea del Sarto', by Robert Browning.
> 
> “Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,  
> Or what's a heaven for?”

**i.**

_ “Isn’t that true Mycie?” _

If only it was so simple.

The hallway outside the memory room was uncomfortably silent, and offered Mycroft no distraction from his brother’s pressing logic.  Just because something was simple and obvious; and just because his fingers twitched to gather him closer, because his mind had never strayed far from Sherlock, even in life-- none of things meant that it  _ should _ happen.

None of it meant that this was right.

His brother trusted him to do what was best for them both.  Was this? He didn’t know.

“Sherlock…”  He began, the pair of syllables acting like little more than verbal punctuation.  A solemn double-beat, thin and wavering with his crumbling resolve. “You know I care for you, you’re my brother.  I always have. And I’ll always be there for you. But--”

Mycroft’s fingers were cold as he lifted his free hand to Sherlock’s cheek, feeling the living warmth of him against his palm.  It would be so easy, so terribly easy, to close the space between them. To listen to Sherlock’s words and be swayed by them.

Softly, his disobedient thumb smoothed over the generous pink spill of his brother’s mouth, lingering on the softness of his lower lip.  

_ So easy.   _

“Right now I’m here with you.  The rest is immaterial. I won’t be there for much longer... And I will come find you.  I --”

Like a heat mirage rising up from the floor, Mycroft’s image wavered, liquid.  And in the next heartbeat, he was gone. Back to whatever torment the Powers That Be had arranged for Sherlock.  

 

**ii.**

Molly found herself soothing Sherlock once again as he emerged from his Mind Palace gasping like a man drowning and calling out Mycroft’s name.

“Shh… Sherlock… It’s ok. It’s ok!” She murmured, even though it clearly wasn’t.

She had had plenty of time to think over what he had revealed to her earlier, and was now, as always, firmly resolved to help him out.

There had to be something deliberate about separating these two in the afterlife, and while she had no desire to see Sherlock being sent to the Bad Place, she could not sit by and allow Mycroft to suffer there either. She had seen exactly how much he cared for his younger brother during those years when they had conspired together to keep him safe during the Fall.

She had wondered fleetingly why she, herself, had been matched with Mycroft as a soul mate, and thought maybe it had something to do with the fact that Mycroft had probably never been that close to anyone else during his last life on Earth.

_ His last life. Her last life.  _ _   
_ _ Sherlock’s last life _ .

From what Sherlock had been saying, it seemed as though many past lives had been involved. She wondered how many she had had. Too bad that she did not have a Mind Palace to explore.

_ Like the tombs of the Pharaohs… But maybe Janet could possibly give her this information? _

It was in the midst of these ruminations that Sherlock had suddenly come back from his wanderings, and she had changed gears to focus on him.  Her questions about herself could wait; other things were more pressing.

After she had made him drink some water, and he had looked less agitated, Molly asked him to describe everything that had happened.

As he spoke, she thought he looked so content despite his obvious frustration. As though the final problem of his life had been solved.

_ All those years of telling people that he was a high functioning sociopath and alone protects me…  And he had found the love of his life…or lives…in his own brother? _

“So what did Mycroft say when you deduced that he loves you?” She asked him, holding his hand and sitting by him on the edge of the bed.

“He… He won’t …” Sherlock looked up at her, an expression of sorrow and frustration writ large over his features. “You know how he is. Eternally duty bound. He is refusing to accept it. Out of some ridiculous notions of propriety or morality or something. But I know I am right. I could see it in his eyes when I told him. You tell me Molly—why else would this place, which is supposed to Mycroft’s heaven, be 221B?!”

Molly nodded. She had made that deduction a while ago.

Sherlock was getting angry now, his emotions gathering momentum. “But in both those lives he was with me. We were happy, Molly.  _ Why can’t he just say it?! _ How difficult can it be to say  _ three words _ ?’

“I love you. I. Love. You. That’s it. That is  _ all _ I want to hear from him! No ‘I love you like a brother’. These are just words! Just words! He spent his entire  _ life  _ dealing with words and now… If I asked you to say them to me, wouldn’t you?”

Molly gave a wry smile. “No Sherlock, I would not. Do you know why? Because they are true.”

Sherlock just stared at her and blinked rapidly. “Molly… I am sorry… I didn’t mean to...”  How had he forgotten that?

“It’s ok, Sherlock. I have always known that your heart would not belong to me. I’m just happy to know that it does belong to someone! And I can understand why Mycroft is finding it so difficult to say. Not because he does  _ not _ want to, but because he  _ wants _ to! And he knows that he is trapped in the Bad Place, and he will never do anything that will make you want to go there.’

“So… What we need to do is figure out how to assure him that both of you can be safe. Remember Janet spoke about helping him escape? Maybe we can escape from here, and you can meet him somewhere in the middle? Or at the edges.   Depending on whether the afterlife is a sphere or flat… or…”

Sherlock jumped up as she trailed off, looking at her with a wide grin on his face.  It was a plan, something he could  _ do _ , instead of sitting around feeling helpless!

“Molly You are a genius! Yes! I need to have something to negotiate with him and…  _ Janet! _ ”

“Hello! How can I help you?” Janet said as she appeared behind him.

He turned around, excitedly waving his hands. “Janet! We have to find a way to escape from here and meet My… My brother, when he finds his way out of the catacombs.”

Janet gave a cheerful smile. “No one has  _ ever _ found their way out of the catacombs yet. It has been 20 quintillion years that we have been keeping track.”

“He will. Don’t worry. I know he will. If anyone can, it will be Mycroft.” Sherlock assured her. “Just tell us how we can leave from here!”

Janet produced a 3D map with a deft twist of her wrist, and showed them the way to the Central River, and how to get to the Event Horizon of Everlasting Sand. She marked with a cross the point where the catacombs led out to the Sand.

She smiled again cheerfully. “Remember, that if you are caught you will be taken away to the Eternal Waiting Room Centre for Rehabilitation and Cure.”

“Umm… What happens there?” Molly asked, not liking the sound of that at all!

“They play muzak at high volume all the time. There is no way to distinguish between day and night, due to the artificial lighting and the air conditioning. There will be constant echoing announcements playing at irregular intervals, and you will have to stand in some kind of queue. All the time. For eternity. There may or may not be decent food. Ever.”

Molly just blinked in horror at this description, rendered speechless.  Eternity in a bureaucratic queue?

_ It sounded like an airport lobby, _ Sherlock thought, shuddering.  _ They had to do absolutely everything they could to avoid being caught! _

 

**iii.**

“Mycroft?   _ Mycroft! _ ”  

When he opened his eyes, it was not-Anthea’s face that hovered directly in his line of sight; pinched and unhappy with having to disturb him.  It was just another reminder that this wasn’t home, and she wasn’t the Anthea he knew, and missed.

The real Anthea would have texted him from outside the office.  Or, in dire circumstances (it had happened, most recently during the last Paraguayan election) would jab him unceremoniously with the blunt end of her pen, careful not to stain the fabric of his suit.  It was the unfortunate side effect of working for seventy hours at a stretch.

In that moment, Mycroft would have given anything to be back there.

His belly churned sickly with the thought of what was ahead of him.  Both the known-- the endless plains of burning, parched earth. And the unknown-- what came beyond the wastes?  And what of the catacombs where even not-Anthea couldn’t follow?

There was no point to asking questions, not anymore.  They’d talked, they’d worked out their plan as well as they could, accounting for the sheer madness and unpredictability of Hell.  The only thing left, was to leave.

And so, in silence, not-Anthea opened a door in the wall that had certainly never been there before (or perhaps it was only visible to people who had never been human?  He couldn’t say, and was more eager to put it behind him).

Forward.  

There was no other option, and he had miles to go before he could see Sherlock again.

After the cold inside, the parched, dry heat was an assault on his senses; it sapped the moisture from his lips, and sizzled the droplets in his lungs with each pained inhale. Every instinct told him to stay small, to make himself as unobtrusive as possible.

As a child, Mycroft seen a mouse scurry across the kitchen floor from his high chair; he’d been darting through the human minefield, and through a hole in the wainscotting.  

But Sherlock was no mouse, and Mycroft knew his deception hinged on his ability to maintain the charade.  To pretend he was his brother.

His tie was resigned to his pocket, and Mycroft could feel the burning air on the hollow of his throat.  The creased fabric of his waistcoat and jacket were wilted with wear and heat, and hung loose at his sides when he unbuttoned them.  

The once crisp, white linen shirt soon turned the colour of toast, stained with heat, and the fine rusty silt that rose with every footstep.

One step in front of the next.

Back as straight as he could.  Arms loose at his sides.

He was a Holmes, as was his brother.  Neither would let this place break them.

Sweat burned his eyes, and the tiny darkness on the horizon that Janet (for it turned out, that was her name) promised was the entrance to the catacombs, never seemed to draw any closer.

The only mercy was that the guards didn’t seem to notice anything wrong.  Janet’s hand on the back of his neck was the only cool thing in the blistering landscape; and it was a small comfort, even when she clawed her fingers against his skin, and her nails bit in savagely.

It only happened around the guards, and the bruises he could feel rising up beneath the surface were a small price to pay for their escape.

They both had their roles to play in this deception.

There was scarcely enough moisture in the air to breathe, and none left to talk.  So in silence they continued across the vast wastes. 

Mycroft wasn’t certain how long they had been pressing forward; ducking behind the sharp, basalt black outcroppings of stone whenever the guards approached, and facing them when they couldn’t hide.

The burnt orange sky never seemed to change.  It was a constant, radiating glow of toxic coloured light; like standing beneath a heat lamp.  

_ Moriarty called you the Iceman.  If only he could see you now. _

Without Janet, who never seemed to get lost in the shifting heat mirages, Mycroft knew he would have been lost.  Wandering the vast, blasted emptiness until he was discovered.

“You!  Janet! What are you doing with that fucking prisoner?”

They stopped short, caught off guard, at the phlegmy sound of the guard’s voice, his massive bulk sidling around the side of a torture pit.

Mycroft had glanced over the edge of one, once.  

He had no words for the suffering in those tortured depths, and had never looked again.

“Taking him to Level Three.  Boss wants to..  _ You know _ .”  Janet smirked, a slanted and nasty expression that most of the guards seemed to approve of.  One of her hands was planted on her hip, the shine of black vinyl between her fingers as she looked up at the guard.

He dwarfed them both, with sickly, jaundice coloured skin, and arms that were wider around than Mycroft’s waist.  Perhaps twice his waist. 

And looped through his heavy belt, was a flail.

It was a wicked looking thing.  The flail had a stout handle, and both the rough chain, and the massive, spiked ball at the end were rusty, and matted with something Mycroft didn’t want to examine too closely.  

The guard didn’t look convinced.

“Papers?”

“Papers?”  Janet repeated, and her free hand pinched tighter on the back of Mycroft’s neck.  

“ _ Transfer _ papers.  And hurry up, I’m not screwing around all day just because you want to have a little fun with one of the carcasses.”  

Mycroft could see how close they had gotten to the catacombs, the black entrance looked only a few more miles away.  They’d come so far. So very far.

_ Whatever happens, you are Sherlock.  That’s the only way to keep him safe. _

For a instant, Mycroft caught the look in Janet’s eyes; the apology, because she had promised to guide him to the catacombs as safely as she could.  

Not every mission was a success, he wanted to tell her.  

And they had both known the risks.

There was nothing more she could do.  Not then, and not for him.

As the guard snapped his raw iron cuffs around Mycroft’s wrist, the metal burred and sharp, he doubted he would ever see the inside of his blank cell again. 

“So, trying to  _ escape _ , huh?”  The giant man snorted derisively, and spat on the ground, the glob sizzling on the heated stone.  “You thought you were going to get out of here? Fucking dreaming, you are.”

_ Sherlock.  He has to believe you’re Sherlock. _

_ I love you, brother mine… Forgive me. _

“Is that the best you can come up with?  Clearly, you’re depriving some village of their idiot.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come swing down into the comments and chat Holmes-y goodness with us! (Because what day isn't brightened with some Holmescest?)


	13. I will follow you and make a heaven of hell. And I will die by your hand, which I love so well.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The price of failure, and what endures after.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone! Just a heads up that this week's Thursday chapter might be posted at a different time than usual. It's just a busy week! But it will definitely be posted, and then everything should be back to normal on Saturday.
> 
> The title is from Shakespeare's, 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'.

**i.**

Sherlock had been restless for what seemed to him to be hours and hours… Endless hours. His brain felt stretched with anxiety and stress, and he felt brittle and fragile, and was going to snap and break and shatter.

In fact, he would have done so ages ago if it had not been for Molly. Calm, soothing, gentle Molly. Clever Molly.

She had kept him busy plotting the river route, and studying the currents, and the various possibilities. She made him deduce which opening from the catacombs was the closest to where they could land.

She helped him speculate what they might find when they arrived there.

He kept answering, and working, and drawing, and planning, while one part of his brain was just screeching with the agony of not knowing.

Finally he had enough, and slammed the pencils and map down, and stood up.

“I can’t do this Molly. I have to know. I HAVE to know!”

“But Sherlock,”  Molly looked up from her notes, her expression pinched with empathy, “If you call Janet now, and she is in the middle of helping Mycroft, you will get him into trouble!  Wait for another hour. That is all. One hour more. You can do it! Why don’t we go for a walk?”

So they did, and she kept him distracted by doing a reconnaissance for the escape routes; where they would take the boat, how far the river seemed to be from where they were.  How many steps had they walked. A million little fragments of minutiae to occupy his mind.

By the time they got back Sherlock was much calmer, but now completely focussed only on finding out what had happened to Mycroft, and raring to leave for the Central River.

As soon as they stepped into the house, and closed the door, he called Janet.

“Hello!” She chimed, as she appeared behind the sofa. “What can I do for you?”

Sherlock looked at her impatiently, “You know what we want! Tell us when Mycroft will be coming out of the catacombs and when we should leave from here!”

“Mycroft did not make it to the catacombs. He was caught and taken away to be punished.” She said cheerfully.  

Well, her voice was cheerful, but it was hard to tell how much was genuine delight with the world-- and how much was simply programming she couldn’t overcome.

Molly gasped in shock and Sherlock hissed at Janet. “WHAT? How could you let that happen?!”

“I have been rebooted for the 666th time, and it seems to have introduced some errors and flaws.” Her voice suddenly drooped. “My limitless knowledge failed me. Failed him.”  Reaching into her pocket, Janet offered him a pin. Small and silver, sitting in the palm of her hand.

Sherlock took it and just stared, “What is this for?”

“Well, you need to put it into this hole behind my ear, and then tap my nose at the same time, so that I can self- destruct.”

Suddenly her face crumpled up and one tear rolled down her cheek. She touched it, and looked at it, bewildered.

“Oh.” Janet said in a small, surprised voice. “I feel sad. So very sad…My latest re-boot seems to have given me feelings and added errors. I let him down... He is a good man and I let him down. I am not worthy! Destroy me. Now!”

“Uh Janet?” Molly said, coming over quickly and putting her arm around her shoulder. “We all make mistakes.”

“No… I don’t.” Janet said sadly, shaking her head, “I have been engineered with all of the knowledge in the universe, so I  _ can’t  _ make mistakes.”

“Well, you just did...!” Sherlock blurted angrily as Molly tried to shush him.

“It happens.” Molly said to Janet. “What humans do? Is that we get up, and figure out what went wrong, and what we can do to correct it. Ok? We all make errors, and we all have feelings, but we… We keep calm and carry on. Does that make sense? So you need to do the same. No self-destruction and no self-loathing. Do you understand what I am saying, Janet? We can fix this.”

Janet nodded, but it was hard to tell if she believed the reassurance. “Yes. I will not make a mistake again. The next attempt will work.”

“Next attempt? When will be the next attempt?!” Sherlock asked frantically. “And where is Mycroft now? What is happening to him?”

“I can’t show you but I can play an audio if you like?” Janet asked, cheerful again and relieved to be able to help.

Molly paled and turned to Sherlock. “I don’t think that is a good idea, Sherlock! He is already in Hell and this is a punishment… Maybe you don’t want to--”

“No Molly, I  _ HAVE _ to know! Play it Janet.”

Janet smiled and opened her mouth wide.

Molly thought she would never forget, to the end of her days, even in the afterlife, the kind of agonized inhuman sounds of pain.  The weeping, and the sounds of torment that filled her with a nameless horror, as the cacophony from Hell emerged from that 6 seconds audio. 

Then Sherlock clamped his hand over Janet’s mouth, shaking in terror and anguish.

Janet closed her mouth and smiled. “I will attempt another extraction in 3 days. After he recovers from this punishment. Goodbye.”

And then she was gone. Sherlock collapsed on the floor and curled up in a fetal position, simply unable to cope with what he had just heard.

Was this his fault?

 

**ii.**

Life came with the promise of death.  It was the absolute. And whether you feared it, or greeted it as a friend, it was always there.  No matter how terrible the world became, and how unendurable the pain, eventually…  _ Eventually _ … Every man, woman and child would face it.

There was no death in the afterlife.

And so there was no hope for Mycroft to escape his punishment.

He pleaded for death long before it was over.

In this place where time seemed to have twisted and turned back on itself, the clock frozen and still, they had turned suffering into an art.  A hundred thousand years of people had passed through those doors. 

Mycroft had seen the glittering instruments before they began.  He watched as they grew red with blood. He watched, and he waited for the death that part of his mind still expected.  Surely, there had to be some limit. Some point where the black relief of unconsciousness would roll over him, and bring peace.  

That moment never came.

He broke before the end. 

And they laughed.

But even then, flayed open and weeping, Mycroft held onto his simple truth.  The one that had sustained him, even when the hope of death had vanished.

_ Sherlock will never see this place. _

**_Sherlock will never see this place._ **

It was the truth that even their cruelty could not touch.  Some things endured, even when hope was gone. When they had taken everything, and what remained of Mycroft Holmes could scarcely remember that he had once been a man, it remained.

All the tortures of Hell couldn’t make him forget that he had was loved.

One day, he swore to himself-- in that place where hope was sent to die-- he would see him again.

Sherlock was safe.  It was the only thing that mattered.

And in the quiet that followed, when Mycroft had been left in his cold, isolated cell, he left that place and retreated to the warmth of his…  No.  _ Their _ .  Mind Palace.  

Here, where it was peaceful.  Here, where they couldn’t touch him, and he could will away the marks of their punishments.  

And if he could still feel the pain of them?

Well, Sherlock never needed to know.

His eyes closed, Mycroft rested his head against the back of a deep, comfortable chair that had once been in his father’s office, when they were young.  

He would wait, and Sherlock would come.  

 

**iii.**

“Sherlock? Please Sherlock?!” Molly was shaking Sherlock. “Wake up!”

She was shell shocked by what they had heard, but it seemed as though Sherlock had become catatonic. She got some water and sprayed it on his face; and she shook him as hard as she could, trying to pull him out of his cycle of despair.

_ They needed to strategize and quickly! _

The thought of Mycroft suffering enough to actually scream… It made her shudder, remembering that elegant, soft spoken man who had communicated with her during the planning for the Fall.

_ They needed to get to him, and she needed Sherlock to wake up. _

“Sherlock!” She said, looking into his unseeing eyes. “Mycroft needs you! Wake up!”

Sherlock blinked.  _ Good! _ Molly thought.  _ Finally. _

“Mycroft is in pain! Find him! Go into your Mind Palace! Meet him there.  _ Help Mycroft! _ ”

As she said his brother’s name for the third time, Sherlock seemed to finally emerge from his shock. He gripped her arm, fingers biting into her bicep.

“Molly! How… How could they?! I couldn’t do anything to help him…” He clutched over his own heart, the material of his shirt dimpling under his fingers, “I am supposed to be there, and he is suffering instead of me. Because of me! I need to stop this! I need to find him! I need to take his place!” He looked around wild-eyed and frantic, but saw only the familiar interior of his Baker Street flat.

“Yes.” Molly said firmly. “You do need to find him. But you don’t have to take his place. We need to  _ all _ escape and go where no one can find us. So you need to go into your Mind Palace, and talk to him, and make a plan! I am sure he is waiting there for you.”

Because if he wasn’t?  Molly wasn’t sure what they would do.

Sherlock nodded and drank up the entire glass of water she offered him. He sat up straight and steepled his fingers below his chin, and when his stare become glazed she knew that he had gone to find Mycroft.

Sherlock wandered through the corridors inside his Mind Palace on wings of fire. 

He rushed through familiar spaces, unfamiliar door and arches, sometimes doubling back when he thought he saw someone familiar. It was never Mycie.

_ Mycie where are you? Please Mycie! You can’t possibly die in the afterlife… Can you?! _  He thought with sudden terror rising up in his heart.  _ Please please come to me! _

He swooped through shadows, lifted veils, ran behind hedges and bushes and floated over meadows and finally… Finally! He came to a cobblestone lane, where he thought he saw something that was the breath of his lungs, and the beating of his heart… A figure slumped in a chair against the stone wall of their childhood home, by the large wrought iron gate at the end of the driveway.

“Mycie!”

Mycroft looked up with a jolt, his breath jerking in his throat with alarm, as he took in the figure tearing around the corner.  Sherlock looked frantic, his eyes so wide that the clear blue-green was surrounded by a ring of white.

_ He knew _ .   Mycroft wasn't sure how he'd found out, but there was no doubt that Sherlock had somehow discovered his failure.

With a stumbling lurch, his body caught in the in-between, anticipating the agony of his injuries and not caring, Mycroft stumbled forward and clutched for his brother with desperate hands.

Locked together, they ignored the distant, aching pain-- it didn’t matter, not now.  There was nothing but the ragged sounds of their breathing as they clung to one another; the lines blurring until neither of them was entirely sure which one was offering comfort, and which was being soothed by it.

Which of them was shaking, until the tremors threatened to rattle them both apart.

Even in death, Mycroft could feel his brother’s heart racing against his own chest, and the cadence of it mirrored the way his own breath panted against the side of Sherlock’s neck.  

Every inch between them felt like a mile too far.  And they had nearly lost each other again. 

Finally Sherlock let go, and holding Mycroft’s face in his hands, he kissed him.

Softly, like a prayer. Like a blessing

Like a lifeline.

“Mycie,” he whispered over his lips.

One, perhaps both of them, tasted of salty tears-- and this time, Mycroft didn’t push him away.  

There, in the quiet corner of their Mind Palace, he threaded his fingers through the disheveled curls at the nape of Sherlock’s neck, and rested their foreheads together.  The space between them was damp with tears and shared breath, intimately blotting out the rest of the world until they could only see one another.

“Lock… My Lock…”  Mycroft whispered against the warmth of Sherlock’s lips, “They can’t hurt you, I’d never let them.  I swore I’d find a way back to you, and I will. _I will_. Nothing else matters but that.”


	14. Remember tonight... For it is the beginning of always.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the Holmes brothers find a little clarity by looking at their own lives.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title for chapter 14 is from Dante Alighieri.

******i.**

In life, their Mind Palaces had been orderly places.  They were, after all, mnemonics of their own creation; simple concepts that they’d built on every year, until they’d become sprawling networks of corridors and courtyards, outbuildings and fantastical architecture, every piece of them chosen and placed with care.

They’d never been still, or quiet-- their minds were too active for that.  But they had been (more or less) obedient. 

Walls, after all, were walls.  They didn’t take up and move when the mood struck them, mainly because they didn’t have moods at all.  They were walls. And in plaster and stone, they were a functional thing.

Death, however, seemed to have changed the rules entirely.

It had crumbled the safe walls and boxes within the landscape of their minds, and blurred the borders between Mycroft and Sherlock into nonrecognition.  The lines smeared like fingerpaint, instead of the granite they once had been.

Old, forgotten lives had changed the entire landscape of their Mind Palace, and new buildings and hallways had bloomed into existence, creating patterns that neither of them could fathom.  Yet.

One day, they knew, they would map out the wilderness of rooms, until they became as familiar as the streets of London had been.  They would find the answers hidden in the memories; how they died, how they’d lived, how many times they’d loved like this, and how many had ended too soon for them to realize the truth.  

But ‘one day’ was not today.

Today, the two of them had found themselves outside the gate of their childhood home.  It was a little taller than the average garden fence, meant to keep rabbits out of the carrots and parsley, and brush salesman off the front steps.  The garden on the other side was charmingly overgrown,; their father, with his gifted green thumb, had always liked it that way (and, his sons’ had privately suspected, had enjoyed the tsk’ing, disapproving looks from Mrs. Featherington-Smythe who lived some ways down the street).

The walls of the Mind Palace seemed to simply taper away, as though in some unspoken accord with the dusty road and the scrubby grass that grew along it.

This part of their shared Palace had smelled lazily of sunshine and sweet clover when Sherlock had arrived, but as they stood there, cradled close in each other’s arms, they began to notice a subtle chill in the air.  The breeze from the end of the hall seemed to pick up just a little-- it wasn’t uncomfortable, but with a faint shiver, Mycroft glanced up to see what had happened.

Over the fence and through the gate, across the garden that was slowly being covered by a fluffy layer of white snow, he could see…

Himself.

“Sherlock, dearest.  Look.” He murmured under his breath, and nodded towards the small, slightly round little boy who was venturing out onto the patio, his arms filled and nearly overflowing with the warm blanket bundled into them.  

This wasn’t some stranger with his face, it was him.  His auburn hair curling around his ears, as it was wont to do when he didn’t keep it cut short, his blue jacket grown too short in the arms, because he remembered the growth spurt he’d had just before Sherlock was born.   _ Getting you ready to be a big brother,  _ his mother had laughed.

“I remember this day… Mummy and Father had just brought you home.”

Sherlock watched, fascinated, fully aware of Mycroft’s arms around him right now, his presence a balm to his wretched soul, his heart tripping at the sight of baby Mycroft. Well a kid really but his beloved Mycie must have been a baby once too… And had had to grow up alone, and then become a big brother, while Sherlock had always had him from the moment he was born. 

Sherlock turned to look at Mycroft’s face and wondered, for the first time ever-- who comforted Mycroft? Who looked after him? Cared for him? Kissed his ouchies? Protected him? Held his hand to guide him? Surely Mummy must have done all that for him when he was small. But from the time of Sherlock’s very first memory of Mycroft, he had loomed large as the centre of his personal universe. All knowing, all being, and all powerful. 

Always at hand to teach him, and soothe him, care for him, and be there for him. It was as if he had no needs and wants of his own. Sherlock always came first. No matter how difficult the situation, how long the day, how painful the demands. Who did Mycroft turn to when in pain? In sorrow? In difficulty?

Mycroft had been his everything, and Sherlock had only taken and taken and taken,, and never given anything in return… Hot tears welled in his eyes and he turned and buried his face in Mycroft’s chest, sobbing with relief,, and guilt and misery.

“Lock?”  Mycroft started at the unexpected tears, the wetness of them seeping through the creased fabric of his shirt.  It had been years since he’d seen his brother cry; not since the depths of his withdrawal; and he wasn’t entirely sure that Sherlock had even been aware of his tears, then.  

But they had both been through so much, and so Mycroft gathered him in protectively against his chest, warm arms cradling Sherlock close as the little brother wept for them both.  “What is it, dearest?” He murmured against his brother’s mass of thick curls, and smoothed soothing circles over his back, as he had when they were small.

“I am sorry Mycroft. For everything. You were always there for me and I never thanked you enough and I never did anything for you. And even now you are in pain because of me. You were also a little boy once, and you had to become a grown up so quickly because of me. Why don’t you hate me?!”

Mycroft exhaled a laugh, a breathy sound of affectionate disbelief, and pressed a kiss against Sherlock’s temple.  After so much suffering, it felt good to laugh; even though his brother’s words weren’t actually funny.

“Shh now, and look, over there.  Does it look like I hated you?” 

Through the  fence, they could see the way young Mycroft carefully held his snugly wrapped baby brother against his chest, one small hand tucked securely behind his curly head.  It was hard to see the baby amidst the heavy bundle of blankets, but there was no mistaking the curious, solemn expression on Mycroft’s face when he looked down at him.

_ “Mummy says you’re going to be Sherlock, even though your first name is William.  It’s a family tradition, something about it being her father’s name, and her grandfather’s, and they were quite cross when they named me Mycroft.  And it doesn’t matter what you call me, because I’m your big brother. I don’t know how to be, and it’s a little scary, but Mummy says I’ll learn, and you don’t know how to be a baby, either.  So it’s probably scary for us both.’ _

_ “You’re going to be special, like me, I think.  They don’t see it yet, because they don’t understand, but I do.  ‘Special’ is the word they use when you know things you aren’t supposed to, or you learn too fast.  And I promise I’ll teach you as much as I can, so you don’t get bored.’ _

_ “I’ll take care of you, when the grown-ups don’t understand.  And if it gets too loud in your head… It does with me, sometimes.  Or too quiet in the house, and everything is boring, and it’s like it makes your whole skin fit wrong.  But if you’re here now, maybe it won’t be too quiet anymore. I didn’t ask for a brother, but I’m not mad that you’re here.’ _

_ “I got all the books I could find about being a brother, and how to take care of babies, and I borrowed all the books that Mummy got for Father-- and he didn’t read them, but I did.  Because I have to do this right. I want to be a good brother, and that means I have to learn everything I can. Because… Well… It’s ok to tell you this, because you can’t talk yet. But I love you.  And I’ll make sure you don’t have to be alone. It’s not nice alone.. But you have me. I promise.” _

Sherlock turned his head to watch, reluctant to move an inch from the warm comforting embrace and listened to the small child murmuring all these mature and thoughtful things to the baby. He had to laugh as he looked back at his own Mycie and said to him “I think you were born a grown up! I am the luckiest baby brother in the world to have ended up with you.”

As he turned to watch the children again, he discovered that there was one more pair of them.

“Look Mycie! There! Under the chestnut tree—you are reading to me. That book looks like our copy of Peter Pan. Oh, remember how much I hated Captain Hook?! Listen!” And they both listened, Sherlock still snug in the one place that was and always would be his own personal heaven, inside Mycroft’s arms, as snippets of the readings came to them through the clear air under the tree where it was summer.

_ “But where do you live mostly now?" _

_ “With the lost boys." _

_ “Who are they?" _

_ “They are the children who fall out of their perambulators when the nurse is looking the other way. _

_ “What fun it must be!" _

_ “Yes," said cunning Peter, "but we are rather lonely. You see we have no female companionship." _

_ “Are none of the others girls?" _

_ “Oh no; girls, you know, are much too clever to fall out of their prams.” _

Sherlock smiled as he thought of Molly and Anthea.  _ Yes, much too clever to fall out of their prams. They needed to be clever and wise and save these two lost boys. _

He had never grown up and been a lost boy for so long in their last life.  _ But not anymore! _ He listened as some more words drifted across to them, in Mycroft’s lilting voice, not yet changed to the deeper, more authoritative, sterner tone.

_ “I don’t know if you have ever seem a map of a person’s mind. Doctors sometimes draw maps of other parts of you, and your own map can become intensely interesting, but catch them trying to draw a map of a child’s mind, which is not only confused, but keeps going round all the time. There are zigzag lines on it, just like your temperature on a card, and these are probably roads in the island; for the Neverland is always more or less and island, with astonishing splashes of colour here and there, and coral reefs and rakish-looking craft in the offing, and savages and lonely lairs, and gnomes who are mostly tailors, and caves through which a river runs, and princes with six elder brothers, and a hut fast going to decay, and one very small old lady with a hooked nose.”  _

The kid Sherlock was wriggling in excitement.  _ “Mycie, I want a Mind Map too! With lots of treasures and pirates and caves and… and dragons and many many ad-ven-tures!!” _

Mycroft smiled at him and said  _ “You, little bee, deserve something even bigger and better.  I will help you build a proper Mind Palace, if you like… One just like mine.” _

The tiny Sherlock, probably 5 years old, had jumped on his brother’s lap and given him a delighted kiss, and run around the tree in his excitement, until he was dizzy, Mycroft laughed and finally called him back.

_ “Come back Lock! There are still so many adventures to have! See what the book says – “To live will be an awfully big adventure.”  _

And it had been.


	15. Everyone cared for him, but you looked at him as though he’d been given to you, the miracle of life itself.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which some old demons are finally laid to rest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title is from Elizabeth Knox's, 'The Vintner's Luck'.

**ii.**

Outside the low, wrought iron gate, where the marble tiled floor gave way to uneven cobbles and tufts of scrubby grass, Mycroft guided Sherlock over to the broad, high backed armchair and pulled it closer to the fence.  The last time he’d seen it, it had been (and, he thought, probably still was) behind his father’s desk. He’d thought it was a strange thing when he’d arrived, this chair just sitting incongruously in the short corridor, along with the view of the garden.  

But now, pulling Sherlock in with him, he could see the wisdom of it.

It was worn at the arms and edges, and upholstered with an old brocade that Mycroft had thought quite fine when he was young.  Sherlock had draped across his lap when he was small, traced the patterned fabric with his fingers; and they’d spent more than a few quiet, rainy afternoons there, cuddled in while Mycroft read him stories.  Even though they weren’t technically supposed to be in their father’s office. 

With an adult’s perspective, Mycroft realized that he must have known, and chosen to turn a blind eye-- but as a child?  The illicit thrill of it, the sneaking and the hiding, had always been part of the fun.

They were too tall now to sit as they had, but there was just enough room (even though Sherlock was half tucked in his lap) for both of them to curl in close.  Mycroft rested his chin on his brother’s shoulder, and threaded his arms snug and warm about his waist; the two of them overlapped and squeezed in together.

It was unexpectedly perfect.

“I lost count of how many times I read you Peter Pan.”  Mycroft murmured against his shoulder, and his half smile came more easily than it had at any point since their deaths.  “And you never seemed to get tired of it. Even when you claimed you weren’t terrified by the crocodile... You were scared of Mr. McGregor in Peter Rabbit as well, do you remember?”

Sherlock grunted against his chest and gave him a half- hearted punch on his arm. “That’s because you used to  _ make _ it sound scary! Bad Mycie!” And then he peeped up at him through his lashes and smiled.  Clearly all was forgiven.

It was more sweet than bitter, watching their memories played out in front of them.  One by one, the garden filled with them in pairs. Mycroft holding his baby brother’s soft, pudgy hands as Sherlock took his first, wobbling steps.  Sherlock with a pirate’s hat made of folded newspaper, hiding amidst the cabbages and carrots in the garden, while Mycroft pretended not to see him.

“Lock, there you are, on the patio.”  With their joined fingers, Mycroft motioned the skinny waif on the back stairs, all odd angles and too-long limbs, with a shock of ink black curls sticking out in an untamed tangle.  “I’d almost forgotten what a wildling you were. What were you, eleven? Twelve? I remember you sprawling out on my bed when I got home from university. You claimed it was the best place to get rid of your growing pains, do you remember?”

Only, at the moment he seemed like he was trying to burn holes in the back of his big brother’s head with the intensity of his angry glare.  Mycroft was saying goodbye to someone at the gate-- memory had left them a vague and unimportant shadow, just beyond the hedgerow. 

It was almost stranger than seeing themselves as small children; these bones had the makings of the men they would be, shades in the shape of the jaw and the cut of the cheekbones.

In his late teens, Mycroft had began shedding his childhood roundness at a rate that had alarmed their mother.

Mycroft had never been able to see in his own mirror.  Even when his clothes had grown loose on his new frame, and he had to punch extra holes in his school belt, he had still seen the same heavy reflection looking back at him.

“Goodness, Lock… What had I done to earn such a glare?”

Sherlock looked at where Mycroft was pointing, and instantly remembered it.

Remembered only too well that burning pit of jealousy that had opened up in his heart when he saw Mycroft with this other boy. Smiling, chatting, saying things he had been deemed too childish to listen to as they banished him from Mycroft’s room.

He had sat outside on the patio, his entire world a bleak, grey, barren land as he imagined how his Mycie no longer loved him, and how nothing was worth it anymore. He had refused dinner, his lower lip wobbling in misery. 

He had refused his mother’s offer of reading to him by running away from her and climbing a tree. 

And now he was waiting, almost like keeping vigil. To see any signs of affection from Mycroft for this horrid, hateful boy who was apparently now his ‘friend’.

What did Mycroft need  _ friends _ for anyway?? What did Mycroft need  _ anyone _ for when he had Sherlock? Sherlock hadn’t needed anyone else, ever. Never would. 

He had felt as though Mycroft had betrayed him, and he hated him for it.

What could he tell Mycroft now?  After all that he had been through for him? 

When he was literally braving the fires of Hell to make sure that his Lock stayed out?

So Sherlock just smiled and cuddled into him some more, and said “Oh Mycie, you know I always had to be the centre of your attention. Just me being silly.” 

They were both able to read each other uncommonly well-- but it didn’t make them infallible.  And where Sherlock saw a threat to his relationship with his big brother, Mycroft only saw the intolerably dull boy he’d been forced to play nice with for weeks.

“Very silly, indeed.  You’ve always have my attention.  Even when you didn’t want it.”

Glancing away, Sherlock looked into the other corner and saw a slightly older version of himself, maybe 14 years old? Sitting with his head in his arms and crying and some letters scattered around him.

Mycroft turned to look at the same time, and realized what it was.  

_ Dear Sherlock... _

Even from a distance, he could make out his own writing on the front of the envelopes; it was spiky and crabbed from years of teachers forcing him to write right-handed.  Just as he knew the pages inside would be half pained penmanship, and half smooth, natural, where he had unconsciously switched to his left hand.

“Oh Lock…”  He sighed, and pulled him closer back against his chest.  The brother he could hold and cuddle now, because there was nothing he could do for the teenager sobbing on the back stairs of their childhood home.  

Those were memories, fixed and unalterable; but he could hold the grown man close, and try to make up for lost time.

“My letters.”  Mycroft murmured, his voice pitched quiet and breath warm against the side of Sherlock’s neck, “Mummy told me you refused to read them.  I’d… Rather hoped she was wrong. I missed you, you know. I remember writing... All manner of rubbish, really. Observations and things I’d seen in the news, and anything I hoped you’d find amusing.  Things I’d wanted to talk to you about in-person, but… By then, I couldn’t get away from London as much as I wanted. And you were so angry with me.’

“It became a sort of habit, after a while.  That hope that someday you’d write back, and I’d know you’d forgiven me for leaving.”

Sherlock sat in silence, wishing he could reach out to that miserable teenager and… Tell him what?  What he knew now—after a whole life time of being alone and lonely, and fighting with each other, only to find themselves here-- in an afterlife where they were now fighting tooth and nail to be together?

To forgive Mycroft for having had to leave? To remember how much he cared? Had always cared? To not resent him, and to not let that bitterness seep into their entire relationship and corrode it like acid?

He remembered only too well the world-ending misery that lay behind the sobs wracking that thin body. 

He remembered the slow, inexorable slide into drugs and dependency.  Then the anger and disapproval from Mycroft, which had made him even more white hot angry.

_ You did this to me! _ He had wanted to yell at him.  _ You abandoned me and there was nothing left for me to hold on to but the smoke and ashes of memories. You were my whole life Mycie… My one true love and the centre of my universe and you… You left me behind and just walked away.  _

Every word of every letter you wrote reminded me of how far away you had gone, and how with every day that passed you moved further still… And I couldn’t write a single letter back to you because all I wanted to say was  _ please come back to me _ .  _ Don’t you know that I love you? _

Don’t you know how  _ much _ I love you? 

_ And I hated you for not hearing it without words… Because that is how it had always been between us. You always knew what I felt, what I thought, even before I did. _

_ Why did that change, Mycie? _

And suddenly Sherlock realized that he had been saying all this aloud. Softly, muttering under his breath. But sitting as he was, almost on Mycroft’s lap, his lips close to his ear… He couldn’t have missed a single word.

So he turned and asked him, words heavy and loaded with the pain of a lifetime.

“Why did you stop loving me Mycroft?”

For Mycroft, the hot spark of resentment in his chest died as quickly as it had flared to life-- a flickering, defensive,  _ how could he believe that, after everything we’ve been through?  After everything I’ve done?! _

But Sherlock’s voice was small and soft; this wasn’t the brilliant, acerbic Consulting Detective with the razor tongue and cutting wit.  

This was the reflection of the little boy that had tried to stop him from packing for university with a thousand distractions.  Who had watched from the top of the stairs when Mycroft had been allowed to stay up late with the adults, and he had been sent to bed early.  Sherlock had never understood, not really, that the seven years between them would make things different.

It had been Mycroft’s job to explain.

And the spark guttered out beneath the cold sluice of guilt.  

“Sherlock…  Do you remember when you were six, and so furious with Mummy that you threatened to run away?”  Over Sherlock’s shoulder, Mycroft could see the skinny teenager on the step, and his chest clenched hard around his heart.  “You had your books in your backpack when I caught up to you, and were trying to put it on, without dropping your violin.”

Mycroft paused, and lowered his head until his forehead rested on Sherlock’s shoulder, his chest shuddering with a slow exhale.  “I knew, that day, that I had to make somewhere safe for you. And I swore that I would; so the next time you couldn’t stand the world, and it was too terribly loud, I would have a place for you to take refuge in.  I wanted to be able to take care of you.’’

“I couldn’t explain any of this to you at the time.  You were furious that I’d left, and… For the first time in your life, I couldn’t predict how you would react.  That was terrifying for me. I’m your big brother, Lock, and I… Couldn’t make it right. Couldn’t fix it.”

Tears burned at the corners of Mycroft’s eyes as he brushed his knuckles across Sherlock’s cheek gently, and cupped his face in his palm so his couldn’t look away.  “But I never,  _ ever _ stopped loving you.  It’s not conditional, you can’t lose me…”  He paused, his voice rueful and soft as he turned his words over and over in his mind.

Dozens of languages, but only three words that made sense.

“I love you.”

Sherlock felt as though time had stopped.

Everything around them slowed down and his entire existence was focused laser sharp on this one person who was, and had always been, his entire universe. 

How many decades had he waited to hear those words in this lifetime? These three words in the one voice that was a balm to his troubled mind.

He had heard variations of the theme of course, and ignored them because they were almost what he wanted to hear… But never quite enough.

_ 'I will always be there for you.' _

_ 'Your loss would break my heart.' _

And then there were the exact opposite statements Mycroft made, which seemed to Sherlock in his bitterness to be justifications to explain away the distance between their hearts.

_ 'Caring is not an advantage.' _

_ 'Alone protects me.' _

But now? Having heard these three words that were currently singing through his veins and burning up like oxygen in his lungs? Well, Sherlock being Sherlock… He could not take them at face value could he? 

He had to pick it apart under a microscope, to cook it in a microwave, to dissect it, break it down.

So he took a breath and asked Mycroft. “But not as a brother only…?”

Well that was the question, wasn’t it?

Sherlock had made no secret of his feelings; he’d stepped away from the first strange memories of another life with a fixed certainty that they were meant to be together.  Perhaps propelled by some memory of that version of himself, arriving in a new world, and seeing nothing but grey through the grief.

Hag ridden by the need to stop himself from making the same mistakes again.

But then, Sherlock had never cared much for consequences.

This time, it was Mycroft who looked away; his gaze finding the seam where marble met cobblestones, because he couldn’t bring himself to look at his brother, or the ghosts of their younger selves in the garden.

How could he admit to the vile, aborted fantasies that had crossed his mind?  Sherlock was his brother-- but more than that! He was the one person in all the world that Mycroft had ever truly loved.  

He wanted to protect him.  And this was sick, a perversion of what should have been innocent feelings.

… Wasn’t it?

Sherlock didn’t seem to think so.

It felt like another failure.  Another heaped upon the stacks of failures, as he shook his head in defeat.  

The freckles on Mycroft’s cheeks paled beneath the mottled flush, and the lines of his body were tense and uncomfortable; all rigid angles, and spine arched beneath the weight of his truth.

_ If I’m to be damned, at least let it be for something real. _

It was no innocent kiss they’d shared when Sherlock had bolted around the corner in search of him.  And it had felt more right than anything in Mycroft’s cold, ascetic life ever had.

Each word sounded pained when he spoke, his tone quiet and measured.  Each word tested carefully on his tongue before it was trusted to Sherlock.  “No… Not only as your brother. I tried-- I’ve tried for years-- to push it out of my mind.  I was already losing you, and… And if you never knew? Perhaps you wouldn’t see the… The creature I.. Am.”

But all Sherlock heard was  _ No…..not only as your brother _ .

Then he simply tuned out all the guilt-ridden, self-loathing rambling he could hear Mycroft go on about, and cut him off by tilting his head forward and claiming his lips.

That is all he had ever wanted.

To know that even in their last life, with all their squabbles and nastiness and sparring… Mycroft had loved him… And he knew that he loved him back… And would have told him while alive if they had had enough time.

He always was the slow one… And Mycroft had a seven year head start…. But Sherlock knew that he would have figured it out for himself soon enough. 

All those clues were starting to create a pattern already. The way Mycroft’s cologne had started to make him feel restless. The way he sometimes gazed at his pale elegant fingers tapping on the umbrella handle and wanted to touch them. The way he was mesmerized by his waistcoat and had started imagining himself unbuttoning it… Slowly.  One mother-of-pearl button at a time. 

The odd feeling that pooled inside him when he saw his black car pull up near the crime scenes. It was not the annoyance and resentment he had gotten so used to feeling.

It was anticipation. It was  _ yearning _ .

Yes… For all his genius abilities, he had managed to block these feelings so strongly that even he had not been able to deduce it.  

And then the bomb had exploded and here they were.

“Better late than never,” he mumbled against Mycroft’s lips as he lost himself in the delicious feel of being able to simply do this. Sit on Mycroft’s lap, and drown in his kisses.  He could have done that for hours… Or for an eternity. 

But something seemed to be shifting. 

With alarm, Sherlock opened his eyes to look. 

There seemed to be some seismic activity going on.  Things were shaking and tumbling, and he held onto Mycroft with all his might, but he might as well have tried to grasp at smoke…

They were both flickering, the walls of the Mind Palace blurring.

_ Fading... _


	16. In Heaven, all the interesting people are missing.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is an interlude, some history, and the girls get things done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! Before we posted the first chapter of this story, we made sure to have several chapters extra, just in case life got in the way. Unfortunately, the last few weeks have been crazy for both of us, and we haven't gotten nearly as much written as we'd hoped! 
> 
> We're definitely still here, and still working on it! But we're going to post the next chapter on Saturday, instead of Thursday this week. It just gives us a little extra time to make sure everything is the way we want it. 
> 
> And a massive thanks to everyone that's taken the time to stop and comment, your reviews give us life!
> 
> The chapter title is from the philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche.

**i.**

Set along a lovely green path, a comfortable stroll from a cafe that conveniently always seemed to be selling whatever Molly was most craving, the Heavenly reflection of 221B Baker Street was just _not_ _ right _ .

It looked the same.  Just a bit cluttered and comfortably lived-in, with a few odd little embellishments, because the man that lived there was a bit odd himself.

She didn’t miss the sour reek of unwashed dishes, or the festering, rotten smell that would occasionally escape from the fridge-- a good reminder that one of Sherlock’s experiments was nearly done! 

But in life, the books on the shelves had been chemistry texts and curious references; and in Heaven, there was no need for science.  What was the point of the molecular makeup of coal when you could summon anything you wanted? 

When the laws of science didn’t apply?

Now there were novels, literary classics in tidy rows.  And the skull on the mantle was just a bit too shiny-- plastic, not bone at all, when Molly had run her fingers over the familiar Parietal dome.  

A sanitized reproduction, just like everything else here.

From the chair that had once been Sherlock’s in the living room, (and which she had dragged into the bedroom, because there was no reason not to be comfortable!) Molly watched Sherlock enter his Mind Palace. She was fascinated at the multitude of rapidly changing expressions that were flitting across his face as he sat there, eyes closed.

She’d never had a Mind Palace, but her brain was rather sharp and brilliant, and her feelings for Sherlock? The ones which she was now realizing were far more romantic than sexual…?  

Those feelings gave her an edge when it came to motivation.

He needed her. And that was all that mattered right now.

She was going to help him and Mycroft. She  _ had _ to help him. She  _ had  _ to find a way.

For someone who had spent his entire Earth life claiming that emotions were a chemical defect, Sherlock had now become overcome with feelings for his brother, his logic overrun with sentiment.

She could see the way he looked when he was thinking of Mycroft, the way his face turned wistful and longing -- and she was not sure he was thinking straight, or assessing the risks realistically.

Molly could do that. She needed to make sure that he would always be safe.  What else were friends for?

Distractedly, she wondered if Janet might be free now.  For the moment, there wasn’t much Molly could do but wait for Sherlock to come back, and she’d never been comfortable sitting around idly, especially when there were things to be done!

“Hello!” Janet said, appearing on the end of the bed with a chime. She looked around in surprise and stepped down and came to Molly, taking her offered hand for balance, “What can I help you with?”

Sherlock didn’t stir, not even a flicker of his eyelids.

“Can you tell me more about the history and geography of the Good Place, and the Bad Place?  I need more data to make plans.” 

_ Our escape plan,  _ went unsaid, but implied.

“Sure!” Janet said, perpetually cheerful, and proceeded to tell her all about the Human Resources Department in the Cosmic Company, and how Mr. Lucifer DeVille had first mooted the idea of creating the Bad Place.

Well, that was  _ his  _ claim.  In fact, it was just after The Lady Godiva had created a den for herself, and all the women.  They were fed up of having to share office space with men. (Molly cracked a smile, and for an instant, she almost thought that Janet would do the same).

She called it Eden. And declared that the first humans should live like her, in all their naked glory -- because she had had it with corporate dressing.  

With a glance down at her own Primark striped sweater, Molly opened her mouth to ask if Janet had chosen her charmingly matched sets, or if there was some committee that decided for her.  

Thinking better of it, she motioned for Janet to continue-- as fascinating as it was, she didn’t want to get too entirely side tracked!  

“Office politics.” Janet said with a shrug. “It all escalated rather rapidly when old Sir Pent got involved. Creepy creature, always speaking with a forked tongue. You know how it is.” She said to Molly, matter of fact, as if everyone had a boss with a forked tongue, “Then it all went to Hell.”

Molly was just staring at her, wondering if she was having her on.  This couldn’t be real, genuine history, could it?

“This is the history?” Molly asked, tentatively, wanting to confirm. “The  _ real _ history?”

“Oh no.” Janet said. “This is  _ her _ -story. The real deal. In the Final Battle the women took over Heaven, the 72 virgins leading them-- because they were just utterly fed up of nonsensical demands being made on them. The men were then sent to guard Hell.’

Molly nodded slowly; because she heard every word, they just weren’t making any logical sense!  

“Eventually it became politically incorrect to use either of those words-- Heaven, or Hell-- since humans made up more and more ridiculous stories about them. Every religion that emerged seemed to competing with the earlier one for more insane yarns they could spin around it. So it was decided to call them The Good Place and The Bad Place.”

Janet looked at Molly cheerfully, waiting.

Molly blinked sluggishly, still a bit dazed at all the strange information, and unable to think of what more she could really ask at that point.

She’d never been the church type, and to Molly, it felt more like she’d stepped inside an episode of the Twilight Zone.  A world that looked somewhat the same on the surface, but scratch off the paint? And it was entirely different.

“Buddha was the only one who got it right, actually.” Janet mused thoughtfully. “He preached the Middle Path. Like the Middle Place. That is where you need to make sure Sherlock and his brother reach.”

“The Middle Place?” Molly asked. “What’s that?”

“It is a place that is neither Good nor Bad. It is what it is. You can create the afterlife you want.”

“But… How does one get there?” Molly asked, confused. “I thought you said no one had ever escaped He-- …the Bad Place?”

“That is right. But oddly…” Here, Janet frowned, and leaned over a little to close some of the space between them, her voice lowering in a parody of a conspiratorial whisper, “Some people have wanted to run away from Heaven. No pleasing some people, is there? So they’ve built a loose community that lives on the edge; where the Eternal Sands meet the river, and they seems to be doing well for themselves.”

The more she thought about it, the more Molly understood exactly why people would leave.  In Heaven, all of the ugliness had been scrubbed away; it had been made perfect, and comfortable, and there was nothing more people could want.

Nothing to work for, because it was all so very easy.  With a snap of her fingers, she could have anything she ever wanted

And it wasn’t that she missed washing dishes or folding laundry, or desperately wanted to go back to cleaning out Toby’s litter box-- but there was a sense of satisfaction in those small things.

It Heaven, it was all too easy.

“Have you gone there?” Molly asked with great interest.  Her voice pitched up an octave, and she winced-- glancing over at Sherlock to make sure he hadn’t been disturbed.

Nodding to the door, Molly lead the other woman… Computer?  Personified void? Source of all knowledge?

Janet.  She lead  _ Janet _ out into the hallway.  Just in case.

“Yes of course. I am limitless knowledge and occupy the endless void.” Janet said, the words sounding easy and rehearsed.   As if that really explained anything. Or everything. 

Maybe, Molly thought, if you had all the wisdom in the world, it did.

The silence that fell was oddly comfortable, and Molly offered her a small, tentative smile.  She wanted to ask what the consequences would be if the Powers That Be discovered that that Janet had been helping them.

She wanted to know more about the world, and the Void, and the oddly fascinating Janet-- with her matched suits and endearingly simple way of looking at the world.  

But before Molly could ask anything further, Janet suddenly reached out for Molly’s hand.  It was smooth, and her fingers were human-warm when they threaded through Molly’s shorter ones.

“And I am also infinitely...”  Janet paused a beat, a small furrow forming between her brows as she searched for the word.  One that could explain to this human-- to  _ Molly _ \-- what it was like.  

To find some common ground between them.

“Lonely.”  She finally decided.  

This close, Molly could see the brightness collecting at the corners of her eyes.  She’d never noticed how dark they were before. 

When Janet blinked the tear spilled over, and she touched it, fascinated again.

“Does this mean that I said a sad thing?”  She asked, and smeared the salty wetness between her finger and thumb.

“Oh Janet!” Molly was close to tears herself, suddenly.  How many people made demands on Janet’s time? How many people assumed she was just a program; without feelings or a soul?  

If any computer could have a soul, it would be Janet.  She was sure of it.

“Please don’t be sad. Don’t be lonely. I’ll be your friend. Ok?”

“Really?” Janet looked at her with surprise, “Why would you do that?”

Molly wasn’t sure how she could explain what she felt in her heart to someone with limitless knowledge. So she tried to present it as logically as possible.

“Humans make friends with people who are good, kind, helpful, and who they like. I guess that qualifies you!”

Janet blinked again, and once she had unscrambled and absorbed that information she looked so delighted that she actually laughed.  It was a giddy sound, with clipped edges, like she wasn’t quite sure how to laugh.

Started by her own sound, Janet stopped at once and stared at Molly, her lips moving for a moment around the remnants of the laugh in her mouth.  That had never happened before. And knowing, logically, what a laugh was? 

Well, it was nothing like the feel of it.

“What did I just do? Am I broken?”

“Oh no no!” Molly reassured her. “The exact opposite in fact! You are… You’re happy! You have a friend. You’re not broken.”

She held out her hand again, bridging the gap between them, and Janet took it gently.  These humans were so soft, so fragile; and here was Molly, trying to reassure  _ her _ .  In all the history of the Janets, she didn’t think such a thing had ever happened.

“We are friends?” She asked in wonder.  It was unprecedented; Janets had their functions, and their work, but they had never had  _ friends _ .  

And with a sudden  _ pop!  _  the house was full of balloons! At least a hundred of them, floating through the air and piling on every surface.  A sea of them in every colour of the rainbow (and a few that Molly had never seen before!)

Molly looked around, wide eyed and laughing. “Did you just do that?!”  She exclaimed in delight, as one of the bright, green balloons drifting down from the ceiling so she could catch it.

Janet smiled at her, a little proud, “Yes! I found a happy memory from your records. Your 8th birthday party. The best day of your life. And there seemed to be lots of balloons there.”

But her expression wavered as Molly started sniffling and wiping her eyes on the back of her cardigan sleeve, “Did I make an error again?”

“No Janet.  Not an error at all!  These are happy tears.”  Molly promised with a wobbly, rueful laugh, “Humans are weird that way!  Come on now, let’s finish the geography lesson before the genius comes out of his Mind Palace and starts making his usual demands on my time!”

Janet looked down at her with a smile, “He did that back on Earth also didn’t he? And you didn’t mind it?”

“No. No I didn’t.” Molly said with the sort of long-suffering fondness she reserved mainly for Sherlock, “Not usually, anyway.”

“Do you want to know why?” Janet asked.

“Well. I already know why. It is because I liked him. Maybe even more than like...” Molly trailed off awkwardly.  She’d been sure of that in life; but death had changed things. Was it possible to love someone in life, and have it transmuted to something else after?

Certainly she still loved him!  But it was different, now. Easier.  And even if Sherlock wasn’t so wholly and completely in love with Mycroft, Molly wasn’t sure anymore than she would want to be with him.

They were friends.  And she needed Sherlock in her life.  But neither of those things had the sharp edge of unrequited affection anymore.  

Janet was looking at her with an odd expression, “Molly, if we are friends now, are we still allowed to keep secrets?”

“Well…” Molly started to say, “I suppose ideally not, but of course, I mean… Really, it depends on what…”

“You were his Earth Angel.” Janet interrupted.

“What does… What? I was  _ what _ ?”

“When people are really special, either special good or special bad, we assign someone to look after them in their Earth Life. You were his angel. One of my earlier reboots was given the task to shadow Mycroft. He also had almost limitless knowledge, like me, so there wasn’t anyone else we could assign to him, really.’

“Janet 665 did enjoy being Anthea. Her job, and yours, also included keeping them apart.  Of course, you didn’t know. The Powers That Be had hoped things would go.. Differently. Between the two of you.”  Janet paused a beat. Molly was her friend, and she deserved to know the truth. But would it make things worse? These moral quandaries were new, and she didn’t like them.

“Brothers is fine. Lovers is fine.”  She finally explained, “But brothers  _ and _ lovers? It was starting to freak everyone out a bit.  More than a bit. Time after time. Life after life. No matter what we did, they found their way together. So it was finally decided that there would be no more re-boots for them. One would go to the Bad Place, and one to The Good Place.  And never the twain shall meet. It all sounded very sensible at the time..."

Molly was quite sure by now that she had gone raving mad. Completely insane. Delirious. Crazed. She must be. This was all… This was ALL mad. She felt a bit like Alice at the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, and had this almost unstoppable urge to just laugh and laugh till she woke up.

_ Surely she would wake up now?!  None of this could be real, could it? _

But Janet was still talking. “The Bad Place sent Irene to be with Jim you know…  But never mind all that. Here, take this book for the geography, and make a plan to escape three days from now.”

With a flick of her wrist, Janet pulled a book out of thin air and put it in Molly’s hands. It was an enormous tome, the covers gilded in curling, gold-leaf calligraphy. 

One side said Jannat. The other side said Narak.

It wasn’t a particularly artful way to change the subject; but it was blunt, and obvious, and there was something almost charming in Janet’s openness.

“What are these words?” Molly asked.

“Oh these-- the words for Heaven in Islam and Hell in Hinduism. And the word ‘Earth’ is taken from a Hebrew word. Stops all the squabbles about minority representations. Office politics.” She shrugged, “I should go before Angel notices. See you soon.”

Janet disappeared with a tiny chime, and for an instant, Molly just stared at the space where she’d been standing.

A second later she reappeared, and Molly was so startled that she almost dropped the book.

“What happened?” Molly asked, worried because Janet looked so unsure. “Is something wrong?”  She’d only been gone an instant, how could anything have changed in just a second?!

Janet suddenly leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek.  Quick, and warm and entirely unexpected!

“Bye, friend!” She said and disappeared, leaving Molly flushed and giggly. 

The book tucked under one arm, Molly made her way out to the living room, her fingers still lingering on her cheek.  

She had a book to read, and an escape to plan.  

The rest would have to wait until they were safely in the Middle Place.

  
  



	17. Heaven would never be Heaven without you.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there are travel, trials, and tribulations.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone, we hope you're having a great weekend! (Or week, depending on when you read this!) 
> 
> The chapter title is from Richard Matheson's, 'What Dreams May Come'.

**i.**

_ Sherlock is waiting for you. _

It was the thought that ran through Mycroft’s mind like a mantra as he huddled beneath a jagged outcropping of black stone, scarcely daring to breathe. On the other side, he could hear the heavy, grinding footsteps of the guard, his hobnailed boots biting into the gravely debris.  

He didn’t dare to breathe until the demon had passed, and the branching, staglike protrusions of his horns had vanished beyond the next hill.  

One more guard avoided.  One mile closer to the catacombs.  And with his heart in his throat, Mycroft forced down the paralyzing fear for the hundredth time, and pushed himself up from the ground.  

The only way out was forward, and there was no other option but to move.

_ Sherlock needs you. _

Mycroft had been alone for what seemed like days, ever since Janet had been summed back to Paradise.  He’d always known it had been a risk; her powers were limited in this place, and even she couldn’t ignore her programming.  When the Powers That Be demanded her presence, she’d vanished. And he had been left to fend for himself.

Overhead, the bright disc that passed as a sun had sunk to the far horizon of the burnt orange sky.  And then, like it always did, rose back the way it had come. The promise of a night, of rest, that would never come.  

Mycroft didn’t know if these ‘days’ had any relation to time on Earth, or how long he’d been walking-- only that the catacombs seemed so very far away.  

And the fear of discovery was so very real.

He knew, now, what would happen if he were discovered.  His body felt bruised and broken from their punishments, hobbling his steps and slowing his pace.  But he couldn’t… Wouldn’t… Give up. 

_ Keep moving.  Sherlock is waiting for you.  And if you’re caught, you know they’ll never let you escape again.   _

_ This is your chance.  Your only chance. _

_ You are Mycroft Holmes, and you can do this. _

It seemed like an eternity had passed before he reached the entrance to the catacombs.  It was a jagged, narrow crack in the stone, and a foul smelling torch, half burned, was propped against the wall; it guttered and sparked when Mycroft brought his lighter to it  (nearly empty. He’d meant to refill it, but time had… Death had complicated things.)

It was the only source of light as he pushed himself through the crack in the stone, his feet crunching on the sharp shards of stone and  _ other _ that littered the floor.  Flecks of something dry and bone white that Mycroft didn’t want to look too closely at.  

And it was cold.

Even with the heat radiating from the torch, and sweat beading on his temples, the catacombs were freezing cold. A sickening, goosebump causing change from the stifling heat he’d been traveling through for days 

There was no time to think about it.  He had to move.

_ Don’t touch anything.  Don’t drink the water. And most importantly, don’t get lost. _

Forward was an endless maze of chambers and switchbacks, a labyrinth that no person had ever escaped from before.  It was the hope of freedom, and nothing more. A place for people to exhaust themselves, before the guards caught up to them.

He would find his way.  He would be different.

With the sharp snap of threads, Mycroft pulled one of the buttons from his waistcoat, and weighed the tiny piece of mother-of-pearl in his hand.   _ Like a path of breadcrumbs.   _

Carefully placing the button, tucked between two stones where his pursuers hopefully wouldn’t notice it, Mycroft tightened his grip around the handle of the torch, and took another decisive step into the stale, sulfur smelling gloom.  

  
  


**ii.**

Molly looked at the map in her hands, making sure that Sherlock was indeed following the route they had agreed upon, since the eddies and currents in the slow moving gigantic river may have created new channels since the time the map was updated.

Of course Janet had assured her that the map got updated continuously in ‘real time’ but then she had smiled cheerfully and also said that Time and Space were a human construct to enable our limited minds to break down the vastness of infinity into smaller bits that our brains could understand without exploding.

With that joyful piece of information conveyed, she had vanished, but not before giving Molly another peck on her cheek and a whispered, “Bye Friend! Good luck!”

Molly glanced around to check that they were indeed as close to the left bank as possible and probably heading towards the exit she had designated as the Regent’s Park, since it seemed to be overgrown with weeping willows. She wondered how soon someone would notice that the swan boat was deviating from its designated route and hoped that they would be ashore and at the Middle Place before the alarms were raised.

They had asked Janet for a 3D printer and created extremely good quality replicas of themselves which were currently sitting in the living room at 221B, placed in the position of them reading books at two ends of the sofa. They hoped that Angel would not notice them sitting there without any breaks through an entire day!

Sherlock called out to her just then, excitement palpable in his voice, even though she could see that he was trying very hard not to get his hopes up too much.

“Look!” He said to her. “That way! There is a subtle shift in the colours of the water up there. Those must be the Emerald Waters leading to the left and eventually towards the beach. I reckon we’ll be there by nightfall at the current speed.”

Molly checked the map and hummed in agreement.

Sherlock looked at her and grinned. “Who would have imagined that my one real adventure on the high seas would be on a boat shaped like a swan. A  _ swan  _ for heaven’s sake?! What a swashbuckling pirate I make don’t I?” And he posed for her with a pretend sword and his arms raised in parry.

Molly smiled at him and shook her head at his childish joy. “Aye aye Captain!" She said. “Considering that pirates are more about breaking rules and stealing treasures, I guess the shape of the ship doesn’t matter so much really! And as First Mate, I must advise you to keep your sword down for now and hands on the wheel!! “

Sherlock nodded in agreement and as he looked away, he cleared his throat and spoke. “Umm, Molly, I am not very good at this kind of thing, but I want to thank you. For everything. I would not have been able to do this without you. Any of this. Not just here but on Earth, too.”

He paused and took a deep breath, still not making eye contact. “And I want to say I am sorry. I am really sorry for all the thoughtless and cruel things I said and for not recognizing your importance in my life. Truly. You were so much more than a colleague, or even a friend. I don’t know what I would have done without you...’’ He trailed off.

Molly looked at him with a fond smile on her face, almost feeling like a proud mother whose child has learnt to walk.

“I was happy to be there for you Sherlock. I will always be there for you. All relationships don’t need a name, you know. As long as we know what we have, that is good enough for me. Now don’t make me cry, ok?” And she came up to him and gave him a quick hug.

Beneath the swaying swan boat, the impossibly blue-green waters swirled and blended, leading Sherlock and Molly away from Heaven.  On the left side, the one lush shores were beginning to turn sandy, the green infiltrated by gold until it was all that was left. 

“Land Ahoy.” Molly whispered as they broke apart and she saw the glittering sand emerging from the horizon to their left.

The Everlasting Sand.

It stretched onto what seemed like infinity, until the earth touched the sky in a perfect seam of blue, and sunbaked gold. So pale it was almost white.

The right bank-- washed with silt from the river, Sherlock theorized, like the Nile-- was green, with low, scrubby plants that reached for the water.  

It was beautiful to look at, but they were grateful for their boat; carrying them swiftly down the current, and sparing them days of travel by foot.  

It was a strange thing to escape paradise; and for the first time since their deaths, Molly and Sherlock found themselves alone.  Free from the Host’s keen, curious gaze, and the constant threat of discovery. 

Night came quickly without street lamps, and the constant glow of the city was long behind them. But just as they were deciding if they wished to angle their swan boat to the edge of the river and rest, they noticed-- just a short ways in the distance-- lights.

Beneath the streaked sky, the tiny collection of houses were painted with sunset colours.  There couldn’t be more than ten of fifteen, clustered together against the edge of the water.  They were surrounded by great swaths of tidy green fields, all tilled into neat rows, their crops swaying gently in the evening breeze.

The fresh river air was tinged with wood smoke, and with welcome surprise, Sherlock and Molly watched a cluster of townspeople wade into the water to help pull their boat to shore.  They were laughing, eager for new arrivals and to hear their stories-- a warm welcome as Sherlock and Molly were chivvied out of their boat and onto the sandy shore.

“Welcome, welcome to the village of Waypoint!”  Laughed a man with a cheerful Scots accent, his tall frame and broad shoulders dwarfing Sherlock when he clapped him on the shoulder in greeting, “I’m Oliver.  Now, let’s get your wee boat up onto the shore where it won’t drift away, and you can tell us what’s brought you here!”

But in the half light, Sherlock could see beyond the village.  Out there in the dark, the river vanished into a sharp outcropping of rock; breaking and white over the stones at the entrance to a cave.

The cursed catacombs that none had ever escaped.

_ Be careful, Mycie… I’m waiting for you. _


	18. Perhaps our ruin honours the strength of our love.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the darkness comes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title is from Elizabeth Knox's, "The Vintner's Luck". 
> 
> “And what of those losses that seem unbearable? Separations from people we feel we can't live without?"
> 
> "Perhaps our ruin honours the strength of our love.”

**i.**

Molly could sense that Sherlock was getting impatient with the curiosity and hospitality of Oliver, and the other inhabitants of Waypoint. In her quiet and kind way she took Oliver aside and explained the urgency of their situation, and that Sherlock needed time alone to be able to help his real soulmate escape from the Bad Place through the catacombs.

Oliver looked at her as if she had gone mad. Then he gave a roar of laughter and slapped his thigh.

“Oh lass, yer aff yer heid!” And he kept laughing till he saw her rather grim expression and suddenly stopped. “Yer serious?! No one has escaped the Bad Place. Ever.”

Molly nodded solemnly. “We know. But trust me, if anyone can manage it, it will be these two. So please, we are extremely grateful for your kindness, and we will give you all the answers you want later, but for now you have to leave us alone for a while.”

Oliver nodded, waving his large hand at the whole of the curious crowd, directing them to back off.  Time and time again, the citizens of Waypoint had watched as people landed on their shore with the same plan.  None had ever managed it.

Sherlock would be one more, their sad eyes seemed to say; but they wouldn’t try to stop him.  It wasn’t their way.

They would comfort him when it failed, as it always did.

Sherlock instantly stopped looking like thunder, and allowed himself to relax somewhat. Too many people, too many voices had been jarring, and had made him jittery and irritable. Molly came and indicated a cottage they had been offered.

It was small, but comfortable.  Nothing like the elaborate recreation in Heaven; this was wood, and a clay shingled roof.  It was a small, low bed against one wall, and the rush of the river as it raced by the village. 

It was humble, honest, and didn’t try to be anything it wasn’t.

As soon as they went in, Molly told Sherlock to go into his Mind Palace and find Mycroft, while she kept vigil, as always.

Sherlock sat down and steepled his fingers under his chin, feeling the give of the bed under him.  But before he could properly step into his Mind Palace, he stopped and looked at her.

Molly saw the terrified expression on this face and reassured him, “Sherlock if there is anyone who can ever escape the catacombs, it will be Mycroft. You know that. Don’t worry. Go find him. I am sure he will be waiting, and he will gain courage and energy from seeing you there.  It will help him escape faster. Go on.”

The fear remained, but her words made him feel stronger, so Sherlock entered his Mind Palace and started the search. He was cautious, looking down every unfamiliar passage, startling at shadows, not wanting to miss any nook and cranny where he might find his beloved brother.

A silent chant was running through his brain constantly.

_ Mycie. Mycie. Please Mycie. Please be safe. I am coming for you. _

 

**ii.**

Jean-Paul Sartre had once said that Hell was other people.  

But Sartre had never crawled on his belly across jagged stones, when the roof of the cavern slanted sharply downwards.  He’d never wedged his body through gaps in stone, stomach pulled in, and the opposite wall so close that he could feel his breath reflected back at him.

He’d never scattered buttons like breadcrumbs behind him, because it was the only path he had out of this place.

And he’d never known the crushing despair that Mycroft felt when he realized that the labyrinth had shifted around him; walls moving and realigning themselves.  Recrossing miles and miles of pitchblack caverns, until his torch had burned down to scorching embers in his palm.

Sometimes, Mycroft swore he could hear voices in the darkness, then.  

They whispered and chattered with the most hideous sounds, in a language that made his skin creep.  Mycroft didn’t know what creatures could survive in a place like this, only that they were waiting for him to let down his guard.

To close his eyes, and rest.

When he was helpless, they would come for him.

The sharp walls scraped his hands as he moved through the tunnel, and the uneven floor caught at his toes and barked his shins when he fell.  Here in the dark there was only stumbling; and when the light was gone, Mycroft had no way to tell which direction he was going.

Or how long he had been walking.

There was only forward, endlessly forward.

He walked until the memory of light seemed like a strange thing, and even the bright spots that had floated in front of his eyes had been consumed by the nothingness.  Until his hands came away from the walls, damp with blood; and he knew the creatures in the darkness would be able to find him by the smeared remains he left behind.

Sometimes, it almost felt as though they were calling out to him.  

And Mycroft knew what they were, though he couldn’t consciously remember puzzling it out.  

_ Join us, join us.  We were once like you.   _

_ Let us have your living heat, that we might be warm, too. _

This was the fate waiting for him in this place.  There was no wind here, no motion; just the scrape of his shoes on the stones, and the whispering, chattering hisses for company.

Mycroft didn’t reply. 

He walked until his legs turned to jelly under him, and his muscles cramped and ached.  Even then, he pushed on for what seemed like miles-- but in this place, it was impossible to tell how far it had actually been.

And just as likely that the catacombs had shifted again, and sent him back to the beginning without warning.  Without him knowing.

_ Sherlock needs you. He’s waiting for you.  You can’t give up. _

On the other side, where there was light.  And wind. And water.

Finally, when Mycroft could walk no more, he collapsed into a shallow space between two large rocks, and rested his head on his arms.  A laughing, half-heard whisper echoed from the dark, but Mycroft was too tired to move.

If they came, they came.

_ “We must not look at goblin men,  _ _   
_ _ We must not buy their fruits:  _ _   
_ _ Who knows upon what soil they fed,  _ _   
_ __ Their hungry thirsty roots?” Mycroft muttered under his breath in bleak humour, his fingers curling around one of the stones littering the cave floor. 

It wasn’t much protection, but it was all he had.

For a short time, Mycroft hovered in the black space behind his eyelids, where at least the darkness was by choice.  He wasn’t aware that he’d slipped into his Mind Palace until the glow of light seeped through his eyelids, gilding the world in warm shades of red and orange.

He was so easy to overlook when Sherlock finally stumbled on the right passage.  Slumped in the corner, his clothes were tattered and torn, most of the buttons sacrificed in an attempt to leave himself a trail.  Grey dust clotted his auburn hair, and caked with the smeared blood in the palms of his hands.

And for the first time, Mycroft was too exhausted to project the whole, healthy image of himself into the Mind Palace.  

Through the rent remains of his brother’s sleeves, Sherlock could see the long, thin scars that followed the inside of Mycroft’s arms. They were red and raw, and like seams on a shirt, they ran from his armpit to the tip of his longest finger.

Someday they would heal, and turn silver-- but what had they done? 

What torture could scar the dead?

Then Mycroft opened his eyes, and blinked slowly up at Sherlock.

And there was comprehension there, as he struggled a smile of relief through dry, cracked lips, “Lockie…  I’m coming. I promise… I’m coming.”

 

**iii.**

“Oh Mycie! What have they done to you? Mycie, oh, I am so so sorry!"

Sherlock could not hold back his hot tears, or the sobs that broke out of him. His beloved beautiful Mycie had been reduced to shreds of his original self, only because of him!  If it had not been for the mix up, he would have been in the Bad Place, and then none of this would have happened to Mycroft. 

Sherlock held both of Mycroft’s hands in his palms, as gently as a feather and wept. It was like the oceans were emptying out of his eyes and even in that terrible half destroyed state, Mycroft hushed him and comforted him with his words.

In a way, it was fitting.  Their Mind Palaces had always been their place to retreat from the world; and all the terrible, chaotic, overstimulating noise of it all.  And now, it was their place alone-- here, there was nobody watching, nobody judging.

They’d always been arrogant, and aloof.  The Holmes brothers, with their untouchable intellects and supreme understanding.

Death had broken them into their vital parts, and made them see that the only essential was one another.

Here, in the quiet, dim corridor, Mycroft wrapped his aching arms around his little brother, and cradled him against his chest as Sherlock cried for them both.  Mycroft knew if he started, he’d never be able to stop; and eventually (soon, too soon, he knew that. And knew Sherlock must have, as well) he would have to return to that lightless place.

He couldn’t afford that weakness there.

“This isn’t your fault, dearest mine…”  Mycroft’s voice was a thready rasp, but there was no mistaking the certainty in it, “I could have made this stop any time.  All I needed to do was tell them I wasn’t you.” Slowly, he smoothed his fingers; smeared with rusty, dried blood that flecked away when he moved; over Sherlock’s thick curls, and found comfort in the familiar gesture of affection.  

“Everything that’s happened… I would gladly suffer again, and again, if it meant you were safe.  Don’t give up on me yet, Lockie. I’ll find my way back to you. I swear it.”

_ I will not be one of those creatures in the darkness.  Not when I know you still love me. _

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. The poem Mycroft is reciting is "The Goblin Market, by Christina Rossetti.   
> https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44996/goblin-market


	19. I don't know what God intends, or what qualifies Him to forgive me.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is a revelation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello our wonderful readers! We're so sorry for the long absence! Real life, right? Sometimes it just gets in the way! But we promise, we're still here, and we won't leave you hanging!
> 
> The chapter title is from Elizabeth Knox's, "The Vintner's Luck".

**i.**

Sherlock came out of his Mind Palace with a gasp, frantic and breathless. Molly held his hands to calm him down, and gave him a glass of water, and waited till he was ready to speak.

“I have to go in there Molly! I have to help him. He can’t do it on his own.  He… His body… He’s in so much pain Molly... He will not be able to survive this. I need to find him! I need to go.”

More than anything, Molly wanted to tell him no.  That they had always known the catacombs were meant to be impossible; and going after Mycroft, even with the best of intentions, would only condemn them both.

All of these things were true.  They were the logical inevitability, based on all of the information they had.  Nobody had ever survived, and the village at Waypoint was filled with people who waited.  Endlessly, and eternally, for their loved ones to come back to them.

Yet, despite all of that, could she deny him the chance to try?

Would death-- or whatever passed as death, in that place-- be worse than the torment of knowing he he’d abandoned Mycroft there?

With a silent nod, Molly leaned forward and curled her arms around Sherlock’s neck, “I won’t try to stop you. But the balance of probability, it doesn’t look good... Let’s try and see if Janet can help.”

She took a deep breath and called out, unsure if her friend could hear them from here. “Janet?”

There was a crackle in the air around them, but Janet did not appear.

“Janet? My friend?” Molly tried again, and this time Janet did appear-- but she looked blurry and pixelated. More like a hologram than the woman she’d come to care for.

“Janet? What happened?” Molly asked, worried.

“They found out.” Janet’s voice came, barely above a whisper. “So I have hidden myself in the space-time continuum for now. More time than space. Your lives on earth were just a hologram projected on the fabric of reality anyway… So, what can I do for you?”

Molly blinked, unsure of what this meant in practical terms, but they needed her help. She was not going to allow Sherlock to risk his life and existence by getting lost in the catacombs, and from what he had said, it did not seem likely that Mycroft was going to survive alone either.

For the moment, Janet seemed safe.  She hoped.

“We need your help, Janet. Mycroft is in the catacombs, and Sherlock needs to go in and help him. But there must be some way of making sure that both of them don’t get lost inside. Can you help?”

Janet appeared and disappeared in waves, and half of what she was saying, her voice crackling and indistinct, was lost. Molly found herself panicking just a little bit. How were they going to rescue Mycroft without help from Janet?

Just then Janet appeared again, translucent, and Molly could see the wall of the cottage through her.  When she spoke, she flickered, as thought the energy of remaining even this corporeal was taxing, “I am limitless knowledge living in an endless void.”

Sherlock stared at the hologram. “Janet!” He said firmly, “If you can’t be in space, can you move in time? Can you go back and tell me if I know in this, or any other life, how to save Mycroft?”

It was a long shot.  But they had been together before, and surely, in at least one of those lives, they’d been separated after death?  Janet had said as much-- that the Powers That Be had tried to divide them, and it had never worked. They’d always found one another in their next lives…

Which was how they had found themselves here. Facing this new eternity, cut off from reincarnation, and one another.

Janet flickered again, and seemed to be saying something.  But although they listened very carefully? They could not understand. Then suddenly she brightened again, and they heard something that sounded like,  ‘ _ Samarra _ …  _ The East Wind _ …’

And then she was gone.

Sherlock stood there, frowning, as he tried to make sense of those words. It had been a story Mycroft used to tell him. He hated that story. About the merchant who had an appointment with Death… 

_ Oh dear Lord. _

_ Was Janet trying to say that Mycroft had an appointment with Death, and that nothing he did could save him? _

_ Or was she trying to say that he had an appointment with Death, and that if he tried to find Mycroft that nothing would save him? _

He could feel a blinding headache coming on. Sherlock gripped his head and shut his eyes tight, feeling the fragments of inspiration--  _ something important _ \-- like ice chips in his mind.  Slowly melting in a sea of gibbering terror.

Would his choice be the thing that saved him, or the one that damned him?

_ Mycie! He needed to save Mycie!  How could he possibly allow him to die there in those Catacombs?!  _

_ After all those lives together, even Death could not do them apart. Every single life time that they had found each other, and loved each other, and…   _ As his headache cleared a little an idea began to form in his head.

That was it.

_ It had to be their minds that solved this final problem! Their genius minds, and their relationship, and their having known each other in so many lives. _

_ That had to be a final answer. But how would those pieces of the puzzle fit together?! _

"The Road to Samarra, Molly, is NOT a good omen."

“Yes,” Molly said sounding as dejected as Sherlock was feeling, “I know that story, too. But what did she mean by the East Wind? I don’t remember that part.” She trailed off, wracking her memory for the half-remembered story she’d heard as a child.

_ There was once a merchant in the famous market at Baghdad. One day he saw a stranger looking at him in surprise, and he knew that the stranger was Death. Pale and trembling, the merchant fled the marketplace, and made his way many-many miles to the city of Samarra.  _

_ For there he was sure that Death could not find him.  _

_ But when, at last, he came to Samarra, the merchant saw waiting for him, the grim figure of Death. “Very well,” said the merchant. “I give in. I am yours. But tell me, why did you look surprised when you saw me this morning in Baghdad?”  _

“Because,” said Death,” Molly finished under her breath, “I had an appointment with you tonight… in Samarra.”

Sherlock was too wrapped up in his misery to pay real attention, until suddenly the words trickled down into his brain and he looked up sharply, "Molly! You are a genius! The East Wind was a lullaby Mycroft used to sing to me when we were children. It had a haunting quality, and I used to hate it, but for some reason he liked it. Do you think… That maybe in some past life we’d found ourselves here, and had tried to escape? Maybe we had both been in Hell, because we are brothers and lovers?  Maybe… Maybe we had come close to solving it, and embedded it in our memories as a clue?" He was getting more and more excited now, fingers tapping anxiously on his knee.

“What if, in every lifetime, we added more clues?  And now this here is the final chance we are going to get, Molly?! I have to go in. I have to go into my Mind Palace again, and find all the past lives, and find Mycroft, and rescue him.”

It wasn’t going to be easy, and Sherlock wasn’t entirely certain it was even possible!  But the alternative…? Unthinkable. No.

He was going to do this.  And he was going to save his brother.

It was, if he was right, the puzzle they had been trying to solve from the first time they had looked at one another, and seen love.

So Sherlock went into his Mind Palace again.  And this time Molly got up and started to search for things around the cottage that would be useful for Sherlock to take along when he went into the catacombs. Water bottle, some food, a torch, matches, a compass, string.

String! Surely they could find enough string in this village for Sherlock to roll it along and find his way back out of the entrance?  It had worked for Theseus.

By the time she came back ten minutes later, Sherlock was almost vibrating with impatience. Molly held up a large roll of sturdy twine triumphantly, “They were repairing the fishing nets and gave me this entire lot!”

Sherlock was still sitting with his head in his hands, scarcely aware of what she was saying. It was minutiae, and he trusted her to deal with it.

He swept through his Mind Palace in a state of frantic desperation.  But searching this time -- not for Mycroft -- but for his own past selves. He was floating, flying, speeding through passages as he tried to recall where they had found themselves; the reflections of a dozen lives behind those endless rows of doors.

There were so many, branching off one another and stretching for what seemed like forever-- they’d only scratched the surface of the lives they’d lived.

That green light, the white picket fence, that black monolith, the Great Fire… Everywhere that he could remember he went in, and gathered every possible Sherlock who had found their way into the combined Mind Palace. He had wondered why they had done this, and now he knew! They were hell bent on making sure that even death could not separate them anymore.

On some level, they’d always known it might come to this.  And so Mycroft and Sherlock had set their plan into motion.  

One life into the next, each memory linked together by the limitless expanse of their Mind Palace.  The longest of long games, they had found a way to cheat the separation of death. It had come for them, but they had prepared.

They needed to join forces and find Mycroft.

After countless lives, it had come to this.


	20. I will never leave him. It will be this, always, for as long as he will let me.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which love is courage and hope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We've reached the penultimate chapter! As always, references are in the footnotes. And of course, enjoy!
> 
> The chapter title is from Madeline Miller, 'The Song of Achilles'.

**i.**

In the dark of the catacombs, Mycroft could hear the hateful echo of his own breathing reverberating back to him.  There was only forward now, and a grim prayer that he would escape before the darkness of the catacombs stole the rest of him.

Before he became one of the gibbering, giggling creatures that still followed him, stalking him through the infinite black.. Sometimes, Mycroft could hear the gritty crunch of their footsteps, or the rattling clatter of displaced stones rolling down an incline.

This Hell was the price of their folly.

When he rested now, it was harder to anchor himself in the present.  His mind slipped free in sleep, and escaped the darkness; drawn by the light of their Mind Palace.  Through the corridors he could hear his brother’s voice, the stomping impatience of his footsteps, and the raised, clarion call of his voice.

He was tired, so very tired-- but he could rest here, his head pillowed on his folded arms, in a peaceful corner of the Mind Palace, the self contained world,  they’d created. 

  
  


**ii.**

Sherlock allowed himself to breathe a little, and hope a little, as he gathered all his own past selves and moved towards where he knew Mycroft was resting.  It was a strange image, an army of luminous, ghostly figures that followed after him; like looking into a funhouse mirror that had duplicated Sherlock over and over, and over again.  Each one had their own clothing, their own expressions:

But it was Sherlock.  Unmistakably. 

As Mycroft looked up in slowly growing astonishment at the gathering, his own Sherlock spoke to him in a soothing but firm voice.

“Gather your strength Mycie and work with us here, so that we can find the way out of here soon.”

With those words Sherlock sank to his knees, and gathered Mycroft in his arms; his arms supported him as they both listened to all his past selves start to chant, a strange unearthly choir of the dead.  

_ I that am lost, oh who will find me? _

_ Deep down below the old beech tree. _

Mycroft heard it out the first time nodding in recognition at the familiar words.  This time, it was his head pillowed on his brother’s chest, his body cradled in his arms.  

This time, it was Sherlock singing to him, the lullaby he’d sang him as a child.  

But how could this save him?!  Either of them… It was just a song.

_ Help succour me now the east winds blow. _

_ Sixteen by six, brother, and under we go! _

When they had recited it in its entirety he looked at Sherlock for an explanation.  “And under we go…” He breathed dryly, and reached for his brother’s hand, threading his filthy fingers through Sherlock’s clean ones.  “You’ll have to walk me through this, dearest. What have you discovered?”

Apart from the ability to somehow collect these incarnations of himself; to draw them from their shared memories.  It felt like a dream-- or a hallucination-- and the quiet corner of the Mind Palace hummed with the resonance of their voices.

Sherlock looked anxious, hoping that he had not made an error in his deductions from the scant clues left behind by Janet.

“We asked Janet for help but she is in hiding. All she could tell us was Samarra and East Wind. So Molly and I wondered if maybe our past lives had embedded clues about how to escape and reminded us in every lifetime? If we can find a way to decipher them, maybe it can help us escape the appointment with Death?”

Mycroft looked thoughtful, a shallow crease forming between his brows with the effort.  He was tied, so very tired, but... “You may be right,” he said finally. “Beech trees… Below the old beech…”  The word skittered around in his mind, ricocheting off the hollowed dome of his skull.

“They… They mean wisdom, beech trees.  Old wisdom, old.... People used to believe it connected us to our… Our ancestors, and their knowledge.  How did I miss that?”

“Mycroft, I’m sure they are. But I need you to help me solve it, love — you have always been the smart one!” Sherlock said; hoping to, and succeeding, in bringing the faint whisper of a smile to Mycroft’s face at that comment. “It hardly sounds like a reassuring lullaby to help a child to go to sleep. Also, I don’t remember anyone singing it to me other than you! Never Mummy or Nanny. We have an enmeshed Mind Palace where we both exist. All my other selves in this Mind Palace seem to know the lyrics, so all of you must have sung them to all of through the ages. From all these clues, all I can deduce is that this must be for a reason! When one has eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

Mycroft was looking thoughtful but utterly weary. So weary that it made Sherlock’s heart ache. Some kind of a countdown started off inside his brain. He needed to get Mycroft out of this soon, really soon, before his corporeal self finally gave up the ghost once and for all.

This was endgame.  And if his deductions were wrong…?  

Everything hinged on the unsteady cantilever of his desperate hope.

He took a deep breath and spoke to Mycroft again, softly but urgently.

“We created this map for ourselves, Mycie. No one else can ever make sense of it, I am sure. We encrypted it, possibly repeatedly in every lifetime, to keep us safe. It is a map, a treasure map. No wonder I wanted to be a pirate my whole life!”

Mycroft did smile at that, the corners of his mouth curling up shallowly, and spoke in a tired whisper. “You are a dragon slayer, my Lockie… And here truly be dragons.”

Sherlock smiled back, twitching with impatience, but knowing from experience that making sense of clues and finding patterns took some time even for geniuses like themselves. And when those geniuses had been separated, tortured, flayed, starved, terrified at losing each other, wandering the depths of Hell….

His hand tightened into a white angry fist at the memory of what Mycroft had suffered.

He needed… _ THEY _ needed to solve this.

The final problem.

Mycroft seemed to have been processing many things while Sherlock had been ruminating.

“The one clue that we could have depended on to be permanent in every birth, would have been mathematical formulae. Like the Voyager disc humans have sent into space.” Mycroft paused and then spoke, almost thinking aloud.  “Numbers are more universal than words.’

“The numbers 16 and 6 may have some significance? Hebrews 6:16 in the King James Bible says: For men verily swear by the greater: and an oath for confirmation is to them an end of all strife.”

‘Vedic Mathematics have 16 formulae. The 16th says: The factors of the sum is equal to the sum of the factors.’

“Paul in the book to Corinthians told that there are 16 things connected to love that God has and that should be achieved by people as well.’

“In Hebrew, the number six _ is called shesh or sheeshah. _ It refers to… to... Image.  Man, beast, flesh, sacrifice, intimacy… Finished work, knowledge, sacrificial love, number of man and beast, antichrist, idol, and judgment. It represents sacrificial love and intimate knowledge with the Creator.’

“The Pythagoreans acknowledged number 6 to be the first perfect number. Perfect numbers are rare. Number 6 is the symbol of luck, the highest number of the dice. In the Tarot, six is the card of the Lover.’

“Every Braille cell is made up of six dots. The number 6 is the atomic number for carbon. Our modern 6 can be traced back to the  Brahmi numerals of  India .’

“Sixteen is a symbol of wholeness. This is the number of perfect completeness...”

“Mycroft, love… Stop, you are rambling!” Sherlock said as tenderly as he could, but fear made his voice tremble. It sounded as though Mycroft’s brain was emptying itself out… Releasing all the facts and knowledge inside it… Like a waterfall gushing into an abyss

Dissipating into nothing.

He gave Mycroft a sip of the water he had carried.

Mycroft swallowed and took a deep breath, the water helping slake the gripping thirst that had plagued him for days. Shifting closer to his brother, Mycroft trusted Sherlock’s strength, and sat up a little straighter.  “16 by 6. The earlier compass used to be divided by 8 and then 16. Maybe we need to go in the 6th direction. East South East.”

Sherlock looked at him, slowly nodding as this made more sense that all the other facts Mycroft had been spouting so far.  “East South East.” He repeated slowly, his mind supplying a ready image of a compass rose, “Then that’s where I’ll start my search.”

In the back of his mind, Mycroft could feel the cold of the catacombs reaching out to him. Like a spider’s web, the tenuous connection between mind and body vibrated with warning.  And in truth, part of him wanted to ignore it. To stay here, for just another moment-- in the light, and the brightness of Sherlock’s blue eyes. 

He had wagered his soul to get back to Sherlock… And he was not ready to die.  Not yet.

With icy fingers, Mycroft gripped his brother’s hand and brought their joined fingers to his cracked and bloodied lips.  “If you can’t find me--  _ no _ .  Listen to me, Sherlock.  If you can’t, then you must swear that you’ll turn around, and leave.  Find your way back to safety. I knew… I knew the risk when I entered the catacombs.”

Had he, truly?  Mycroft’s very soul shuddered at the idea of becoming one of those revenants in the darkness.  In that place, he had seen the Hellish definition of “fate worse than Death”, and he would not give Sherlock to them.

Not now.  And not ever.

“The greatest joy in my… In all of my lives… Has been to love, and be loved, by you.  If this is how it’s going to end? Then I know… I know… That I’m the luckiest man to have ever lived.”

For a moment, their eyes met in shades of different blue, and Mycroft felt something rattle loose in his mind.  

They had been here before, just like this.

Sherlock’s arm around his shoulders, demanding that he live.  Until his strength had faded, and he’d rested his head on Mycroft’s chest.  And Mycroft had slowly, tenderly carded his fingers through his little brother’s dark curls, painted white and grey with suffocating plaster dust, and tried to soothe him.

This was how they had died.  The very last time. 

“East South East, brother mine.”

“I’ll find you.”

 

**iii.**

It was always difficult to tell how much time had passed in the Mind Palace, but when Sherlock opened his eyes, night had fallen over the tiny village.  An ominous wind blew up off the water and whistled against the thatched roof-- like whatever passed for Mother Nature in this place was determined to cast the people, and their defiant creation, into the swirling river.

In her exhaustion, Molly had finally fallen asleep, her head pillowed on her arms, as she leaned against the side of the single cot.  It was a restless sleep, and in the darkness, Sherlock could scarcely make out the rapid flickering beneath her eyelids. 

It was a night for bad dreams.

He breathed in and out till his shuddering stopped, Mycroft’s last words still echoing inside his heart.

_ “The greatest joy in my… In all of my lives… Has been to love, and be loved, by you.” _

He would not let that love be defeated. Not after all those lifetimes they had spent being in love, and not after  _ this _ afterlife where Mycroft had suffered in Hell. 

This time they would win. 

He felt a wave of determination sweep over him, giving him courage and strength and clarity.

Love would conquer all.

He went over to Molly and gently woke her up, his broad hand settling on her shoulder with a gentle shake. He needed her, now more than ever. When she woke up, he explained how the lullaby had truly been an encrypted message, that Mycroft had decoded the first verse, and would hopefully be working out the clues in the rest of it inside his Mind Palace, while Sherlock tried to find him physically.

“I have to get to him soon Molly. He is so tired… And in pain. So fragile… I have never...” He stopped as the tears flowed freely, and he tried to blot the worst of them away with the cuff of his sleeve.

Molly held Sherlock in a gentle but fierce embrace, and then she wiped away his tears.

“You can do this Sherlock.” she said. “You can find him and bring him back. I will be right here waiting for you. Ok? Listen to me-- as black as it is right now, it will be alright. Now, eat something so that you have the strength for the final run, and take this new backpack that I filled for you.”

So she fortified him and got him ready for the final battle. It was fitting somehow that this time it was just the two of them, and the cover of the silent night. The wind had stopped howling and the night was now dry. 

It seemed as though everything was waiting with bated breath.

Molly set down her own blanket and food basket, torch, and other survival equipment in the alcove just inside the entrance to the catacombs. She tied one end of the twine to her own wrist and handed the rest of the long, heavy coil to Sherlock.

It seemed like such a length, but Sherlock supposed he would swiftly wish there was more.

“If you run out of twine, tie the last end to this torch so that you can find it more easily. Remember to eat every two hours. Don’t reveal yourself to any of the other creatures. Tug the rope as S.O.S.  Three short, three long, three short, and I will come in to get you.”

Sherlock looked at her, overwhelmed with the love and focus she brought to everything she had done for him.

“Thank you Molly.” He said simply. “If I don’t come back, remember that you are my best friend and that I…  Without you… None of this…”

“Shh.” Molly said, “Sherlock. I know. Now go and I will be waiting for you so come back soon!“

And with a cheerful wave that was more confident than she felt, Molly he sent him off.

Into the final battle.

Sherlock stepped into the catacombs, carefully unrolling the gigantic ball of twine, checking the compass to make sure he stayed East South East. As he went in deeper, the air turned dank and sour, and he could feel the damp and wet, and it made him shudder

He went in deeper, sometimes the passage dipping down; sometimes reaching a dead end, that he needed to back up from.  Sometimes a fork in the road he needed to choose between, onwards and onwards.

Even with the glow of his torch ahead of him, the floor was treacherously uneven, and scattered with devilishly sharp rocks that wedged under his feet and snagged his toes.  He was grateful for the light, and as he moved deeper into the labyrinth, Sherlock tried not to imagine what else might be causing the rattling, clattering of stones further on in the dark.

Sometimes, he would twist his fingers through the rough coil of rope at his waist; feeling for the length of it, and pulling hard-- just once, no use worrying Molly-- to make certain it was still attached at the other end.  

It had been hours already, and Sherlock could feel the first clawed grip of panic in his chest.  Mycroft had been so utterly weary when he had seen him last, that he wasn’t sure how much longer he would survive.

 

**iv.**

Mycroft no longer remembered what the light would feel like.  

The dark was all consuming; a living, breathing thing that wrapped itself around him in a suffocating sheet.  A tangible thing, that weighed on his limbs and tangled with the exhaustion. He was tired, so very tired. And it dragged at his arms and legs when he tried to push himself to his feet.

Would Sherlock come?  

His heart held onto the promises they’d made.  But, stumbling in the darkness, it seemed nearly impossible.  

Or would they both be lost here?  Stumbling through oblivion, and searching for a light that had gone out before the start of humanity?  

Had he condemned his brother… His Sherlock… To the same fate that reached out for him?

With slippery fingers-- and he no longer knew if it was his own blood from the myriad scratches and cuts across his palms, courtesy of the sharp tone walls, or simply the constant, chilling damp that seemed to have settled on this part of the catacombs-- Mycroft tried to feel his way along.  

Listening with desperate hope for Sherlock’s footsteps.

Instead, Mycroft could hear only the thick cadence of his own heart, and the dull throb of it in his ears.  

Slowly he followed the pale, luminous blue light that flickered ahead of him; a glow that shed no light around it, like a will-o-wisp, guiding him on.

_ Light? _

_ Wait… _

For a moment, Mycroft blinked, and scrubbed the back of his filthy hand across his disbelieving eyes.  No, it was a light. Faint and flickering, a figure in old fashioned clothing he didn’t recognize. But the face…

_ The face _ …

Familiar.  With stark cheekbones, and his dear curls slicked back from his forehead.  And after a hundred lifetimes or more, it would take more than the Hellish dark for Mycroft not to recognize the man he loved.

“Lockie?”  He forced the whispered word through cracked lips, his voice thin and reedy with dryness and exhaustion.  Perhaps it was an illusion-- or a hallucination-- but Mycroft smiled faintly at the ghostly figure all the same, and reached out for him.

It was the last word that left his mouth, before the world descended into the black behind his eyelids, and Mycroft slowly sank to the ground and knew no more. 

 

**v.**

Sherlock rubbed his eyes and looked again. It was definitely a glow. Not just the odd phosphorescence that he had seen on the walls in the outer passages, but something more. He stopped to check if he was hallucinating. He closed his eyes and thought of Mycroft. When he opened them it was even clearer. There was definitely a glow. He walked towards it, faster but still careful.

At the end of the next turn, he saw a sight that no artist has ever managed to capture, and that no opera could ever hope to encompass.

It felt like a Mind-Space continuum had been opened up and he wasn’t sure if he would ever be able to use mere  _ words _ to describe what he was seeing or feeling. It was a spiritual experience of the kind he had never understood, or even accepted as possible. 

It felt as though he was in another dimension altogether, and that anything was possible if he could only find the words to ask for it. He felt rather than heard the words -- _ Ask and you shall receive. Seek and you shall find.   _ As they reverberated in his mind.

It felt as though he was having a divine revelation, for want of any better words to describe this. All his past selves were hovering in the open cavern, glowing faintly, as they formed a sort of protective ring around Mycroft who had clearly decoded some more of the verse, and had managed to move further outwards from the Catacombs.

But now he was barely breathing.

The sheer magnitude of love that swept over Sherlock made him gasp, as though he had tried to breathe underwater.

Love. Love for this man, his brother, his soulmate, his past and his forever. This beloved man who had suffered the vile creatures of Hell, and pain worse than Death, to try and protect him,  and then to reach him. He heard a humming agreement from all his past selves as they glowed and flickered inn that cavern.

He wasn’t sure how time was measured in this particular dimension, or how long he stood there, but he knew that everything was love.  And he was part of that love, as was his beloved, and that this was forever. Timeless and eternal.

Sherlock walked to Mycroft almost as though on air, and held him. He felt him take a shallow almost-not-there breath, and he held him close in the most gentle desperate hug that he could.  _ He was alive!  _

_ He was still alive! _

Wordlessly, Sherlock pulled out some sugar water that Molly had packed, and held it to Mycroft’s lips. After he had finished drinking it, Mycroft opened his eyes fleetingly and the glow in the cavern suddenly grew stronger.

“Lock…?”  Mycroft’s voice rasped as he struggled to look up at his brother’s face, illuminated by the otherworldly glow of their strange audience.  His lips moved faintly, a drop of water shining at the corner of his mouth, at a loss for any other words.

Clinging to the cold edge of consciousness, Mycroft lifted his hand with clumsy adoration, and touched his brother’s cheek.  And it was his own blood that smeared thinly across Sherlock’s skin; a tiny flaw that resonated in Mycroft’s chest, and promised that this was real.

That he was real.  Here.

The love that Sherlock had felt was radiating from Mycroft’s soul as well as his own and Mycroft’s former selves too.

Their love had, quite literally, shown them the way!

But now it was time to find their way back out.  

And Sherlock, gathering his strength and courage, bent down and picked up Mycroft in his arms, so fragile and feather light.

There was no running to one another in joyful reunion, only Mycroft’s arms limply around his brother’s neck, his sticky heat of his breath on the side of Sherlock’s neck.  There was a minefield of sharp stones, and dark caverns. 

The hard, grasping pressure of Sherlock’s arms, as he held Mycroft to his chest.

There was a quiet, soul-deep weariness that faded into relief as the endless maze of caverns and tunnels gave way to grey, and then the first gold and pink of the first moments of daylight.

In brilliant pastel shades, the sun was rising over the endless sea of golden sand across the river.  The village was just beginning to wake, the grey coils of smoke rising from their chimneys, a stir of life after the quiet night.

And through tear blurred eyes, Mycroft watched the morning light spill softly over his brother’s face.

The road from Hell had been long, but when Sherlock dipped his head and their lips met, it all felt right.   
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Beech tree symbolism  
> (https://urnabios.com/beech-slender-companion/)  
> 2\. The Voyager Golden Records are two phonograph records that were included aboard both Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977.  
> (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Record)  
> 3\. DescriptionVedic Mathematics is a book written by the Indian monk Swami Bharati Krishna Tirtha and first published in 1965. It contains a list of mental calculation techniques claimed to be based on the Vedas.   
> (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vedic_Mathematics_(book))  
> 4\. The First Epistle to the Corinthians, ususally referred to as First Corinthians or 1 Corinthians is a Pauline epistle of the New Testament of the Christian Bible.   
> (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Epistle_to_the_Corinthians)  
> 5\. More information on Hebrew numerals can be found at  
> (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_numerals)  
> 6\. Pythagorean mathematics  
> (http://www.sacred-texts.com/eso/sta/sta16.htm)  
> 7\. The Lovers (VI) is the sixth trump or Major Arcana card in most traditional Tarot decks.  
> (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lovers)  
> 8\. Braille is a tactile reading system for the visually impaired.  
> (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braille)  
> 9\. Carbon's atomic number is 6. The atomic number defines the number of protons located in the atom's nucleus, so carbon has six protons.   
> (https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-atomic-number-of-Carbon)  
> 10\. The Brahmi numerals are a numeral system attested from the 3rd century BCE.  
> (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmi_numerals)  
> 11\. The compass, with all of its points  
> (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compass_rose)


	21. This horror will grow mild, this darkness light.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which all is well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we are, at the end!
> 
> We just wanted to say thank you, thank you, thank you, to everyone who has supported us through this story. It's meant the world (so we'll let you get onto the epilogue!) 💕
> 
> The chapter title is from John Milton's 'Paradise Lost'.

**i.**

Through the small, high window, Mycroft could see the sun.  He could map the dusty gold bands of brilliant light as they moved across the room-- soft on the curve of Sherlock’s bare shoulder, and the crumpled blankets at the foot of the bed.  

Here, the air moved with the cadence of his brother’s breathing, and the lazy summer breeze that wafted up from the river.  It grew cool as he watched, and the afternoon faded into evening. Beyond the sturdy, unassuming walls, voices called people in to dinner-- there must be children here, he thought-- and the smoky tinge of the hearth coloured the air.

And here, Mycroft could close the space between himself and the man he loved, and trace the tips of his fingers across the curve of his cheek.  The pink spill of his mouth would be soft and damp with breath, and Mycroft supposed he would stir, just a little, and a fine crease would appear at the bridge of his nose, before he fell asleep once more.

So he didn’t touch.  

Mycroft wasn’t certain how long he had been asleep; his memories were hazed with exhaustion and the vestiges of nightmares.  He knew he had been woken long enough to drink something hot and soothing, before sleep had come again.

The sun was in a very different part of the sky, and he couldn’t even be certain that it was the same day.  In fact, he guessed it probably wasn’t. 

In the half light, Mycroft didn’t spare so much as a glance for his new scars-- the ones on his hands and feet that would pink and heal in time; and the long, slender ones that ran the lengths of his arms, and had already begun to silver.  Those would endure.

They had tried to turn his body into the prison, etched with the reminder of his failure and suffering.  But with Sherlock’s head pillowed beside him, and the slow, sleepy rise and fall of his chest to mark the moments, Mycroft did not feel afraid.

It was their failure.

And his constant reminder of how much he and Sherlock had endured to be together.  

Unwilling to wake his brother, Mycroft carefully extracted himself from the mattress, the trestle bed creaking faintly beneath the shift of his weight.  A set of clothes had been left out by Molly-- borrowed, and homespun, they weren’t as rough as they looked. 

They were also far too big, and Mycroft hitched the trousers in place with one hand.  

Outside, the air was fresh and cool, and from their front steps, Mycroft could see the long, rippling span of the river, reflecting the sunset colours that streaked the sky.  For a moment, he closed his eyes and drew a deep breath, chest expanding with the crisp air. Here, there was light, and the human noises of people. There were ducks floating on the water-- 

_ What a strange thing… I never wondered if there were ducks in Heaven. _

Sherlock wasn’t sure when he drifted out of sleep into a blurry wakefulness, but just one night next to his brother and he already missed his presence as he spread his hand out and felt only the cooling sheets. He rubbed his eyes slowly, still weary to the bone, but at peace to the very core of his being.

He had found Mycroft! He had managed to rescue him.

After all the times that Mycroft had been there for him, and cared for him, and rescued him, it gladdened his very soul to have been the one to help. He never had a saviour complex, but he was suddenly overwhelmed by a fierce sense of protectiveness for his brother.

_ He is MINE, _ he wanted to tell all the Powers That Be in all the three realms. For better or worse. To have and to hold. In sickness and health. In joy and sorrow.

Sherlock smiled slowly. And even Death shall not part us. 

Not anymore. Not ever again.

He swung his legs off the bed, and walked over to Mycroft, and held him tenderly from behind. Slipping his arms around his waist, aware of the injuries and wounds on his brother’s body, but unable to resist touching him.

He was here! He was real! 

He was his.

Sherlock remembered that glow of love he had seen when he found Mycroft in the catacombs. That almost divine experience as they had looked at each other. 

He kissed Mycroft’s back, reverently. Sherlock may have finally found him but Mycroft had suffered the hounds of Hell for his sake. A hot tear slipped out of his eyes before he could stop it. Never again. He would make sure that Mycroft would not suffer for a single moment now. He would be his protection. He would be his fortress. He would keep him safe. Forever.

His breath hitched as he realized that  _ forever _ actually had a real meaning for them now. This was it!  The happily ever after.

He raised his head as Mycroft turned inside his arms and faced him.

With gentle fingertips, Mycroft chased the tears from his brother’s cheek, and smoothed the riotous edges of his wild curls behind his ears.  The early evening light was soft, and it blurred the edges of the new scars that Mycroft made no effort to hide. 

All he had been through, had been for this.  For Sherlock.

Since their deaths, Sherlock had wept for them both.  His brother had questions, he could feel the shape of them in every half aborted and avoided sentence.  And eventually, Mycroft knew he would have to face the horrors of his ordeal himself-- but that day was not today.

Today was red letter and beautiful, held in the steady heat of his brother’s embrace, and soothed by the constant beat of his heart.  Today, Mycroft wanted for nothing, because his whole world was beside him.

“Tomorrow, dearest, we’re going to wake up.  And we’re going to see Janet, and Molly-- and explore more of our Mind Palace.  A mystery-- unearthing who were were. We’re going to properly meet the people in this village, and begin thinking about a house of our own.  So this one can be saved for the next divided soul that comes down the river.”

Softly, Mycroft cupped his brother’s face in his hands, drying the last vestiges of his tears with his thumbs.  “And tomorrow night, I’ll steal the blankets, and you’ll commandeer the pillows, in the bed we share. I’ll be here when you wake in the morning.  And when you fall asleep at night. Because there is nowhere else in all the world that I want to be.”


End file.
